The elephant in the kitchen

For the love of God everybody needs to chill the F out.

I think everyone has made enough interesting points that the conversation shouldn’t devolve into attacks. It reminds me of fights with my girlfriend…the later in the evening we get into arguments the worse they get. That’s what seems to have happened here, so now that it’s a new day I’m interested in what everyone has to say.

I tend to agree with you on a few key points. M$ claims to have 70 million blogs, which at face value seems like an innocent claim. It’s not so innocent, though, if that claim is used to justify higher ad costs. So now we have the question of what actually constitutes a blog.

I think private blogs should not be included in the main count and non-updating blogs shouldn’t count at all. First, private blogs are limited in scope to a small number of people. Their potential audience is much smaller than a public blog, so even if they have something really interesting to say it’s only going to be read by a few people. Maybe they should claim to have X amount of public blogs and X amount of private blogs. Second, why should a blog that was created and then forever neglected count at all? It’s not going to get viewers so it’s not going to get ad visibility.

I suspect a LOT of MSN Spaces were made and left alone. Hell, I think I have one of those and one of the Yahoo 360 things. I signed up to check them out, they both “sucked” to me (meaning they had too many features that I didn’t care about), and I’ve never used them since. Should Microsoft and Yahoo count them when they brag about how many blogs they have? Not if they want to be ethical.

Keep in mind that the ethics only count if they use their number of blogs as a reason to charge X amount per ad. If they don’t then I couldn’t care less if they say they have a googol blogs.

All that being said and all name-calling and petty argument tactics aside, this has been a very interesting conversation. I will definitely NOT unsubscribe to any blogs, hell, I just subscribed to Dare’s blog.

Well said, Robert! Kudoes for actually trying to define a blog.

And you actually know how to spell ad hominem (sp?)…are you a product of a parochial school education (like me) by chance?

Skeptic is my hero.

“Unbelieveable: someone blogging behind a firewall to their own family only is NOT a blogger. Sorry. They are something else. Not saying they aren’t important, but they aren’t adding to the Web and, therefore, they aren’t important to ME cause I’m a consumer of things on the Web.”

Next: The definition of “family”.

Robert, I really couldn’t care less about your tiff with Dare. I don’t read either of your blogs regularly, and really, only do whenever I opt to “chase rawhide” and check out the noises in the chicken coop. Once again, I’m ready for Jesus to stop by and give me these 15 minutes back.

To say that people who blog “to their own family” aren’t “adding to the web” is steaming horseshit. Take a deep breath, say the Gayatri Mantra five times, and then pound it into your skull that WordPress, Drupal, Live, MySpace, and whatever else are TOOLS. You know, kind of like certain sensational bloggers when they’re scraping together mountains out of molehills.

Ad hominem enough? I can do more.

Bruce: nope, I went to public schools all my life.

Ethan: well, I care about things that ADD TO THE WEB!!! If you don’t share it with us we can’t add it to our experience.

Hint: the Web is public. Anything behind private doors is NOT the Web. That’s why we call those things intranets, etc.

It depends on whether you agree with Jeff Jarvis’s opinions – personally I would not be inclined to automatically take his recommendation because I find some of his thinking to be patently ludicrous

A listers may have reach but it is arguable that

1) this influence is in some way limited to the geek audience

2) since not all A listers have united opinions they might cancel each other out

Robert

Recently, after the bomb blasts in Bombay, the Indian Govt had shut down complete blogging services like blogger inadvertently (instead of shutting down what they thought were blogging sites that looked suspicious). The service was brought back on with a lot of public support cause some of the blogs on some of those services were actually being used to communicate with the authorities and the common public with information on medical aid, routes that were being opened/closed after the blast, hospitals, phone nos, family contacts and so on.

Why do I say this? Cause none of these blogs will fall into your A list category – frankly is that the measure of popularity alone?

It isnt about Chris Pirillo’s $10000 dollar virtual real estate – it is about people like you and me – real people who use the web (in whatever way they can) to share stories and bridge differences.

Why should anyone arrogate and stand in judgement over what stories they can and cannot tell?

If someone were to have used a blogging service to help the Katrina victims last year, it would be silly for you to say that since it isnt a live blog it isnt “contributing to the web”.

What matters is how easy the blog was to create, how easy was it to access and how many people’s lives it touched.

Pls dont forget that blogging is only the means to an end….

There is only one Spaces blog I read and ‘really’ know about – which is your wifes.

The Rockstar supernova phenomena makes people go out and make spaces blogs – to win something.

Yes, they may be the biggest, but I agree. IF you have 200 m MSN Messenger users, then your numbers should be much higher.

I see, now we’ve moved on to defining the “web”.

“Hint: the Web is public. Anything behind private doors is NOT the Web. That’s why we call those things intranets, etc.”

Hint back: the web is a public medium. To my knowledge, there is no hard and fast rule that says that everything that utlizes this medium MUST be public-facing. Seems to me intranet sites (specifically domain-based intranets) use DNS, same as everyone else. (Yes, I am aware that intranet material can be served up without a web server.)

Again, we can split hairs to the sub-particle level. I’ve got all day, apparently. Of course, as this topic is officially “dead” by way of your apology post, I can stash the electron microscope thisquick. That sounds good too, huh?

I can’t believe how arrogant and childish you are, Scoble.

Blogging doesn’t belong to you; you don’t own it. It’s not your toy that you can take it back and tell people that they aren’t blogging after all.

I’ve been blogging since 1992. Before trackbacks, before Technorati, before Blogger or Movable Type, before Google, before RSS or Atom. Don’t you dare try to tell me that it wasn’t a blog.

I don’t recognize your authority or expertise. You are not an expert blogger — you are a very poor blogger, all told. All that you are is a loud blogger, a frequent blogger, and a visible blogger. All you have going for you in this space is luck that you haven’t yet managed to sabotage.

Robert

Sorry, but I’m going to disagree with you for the first name in a long time.

- I dont care whether we are worth more to the advertisers

- I dont care whether we are losing deals with ad companies/whatever

I do care and appreciate that we are building tools for *normal* people. Moms and dads, uncles and aunts. People who dont know what RSS stands for. People who dont have a Del.icio.us account, Technorati watches and who dont fight it out every 5 months as to what a ‘A List’ blogger

I know that most of the 100 million Spaces would never be ‘true’ bloggers. I have a colleague on my team who uses his Spaces account to upload photos of his daughter, family vacation,etc. He’s not a blogger. He’ll never be a influencer. But I’d rather build tools for him than for any ‘influencer’

Shame on you Robert for saying that a influencer is worth 1000s of normal people (or as you put it – a non-influencer). My sister is and so is my Mom. I would rather have Microsoft build software for my family rather than some exclusive club of geeks.

I dont care whether we have 75 million or 100 million. I dont care whether we call them blogs or spaces or just websites. I do care whether we can somehow enhance the millions of people who are using it. It matters to me whether someone is able to share his vacation photos with his family. If in the process we lose out on a few advertising dollars, so be it.

Software for normal people. That’s what I joined this company to build. Not software for the ‘influencers’.

- Sriram Krishnan

P.S Can you and Dare stop with all the name calling? It’s getting quite childish.

Sriram: >>>Shame on you Robert for saying that a influencer is worth 1000s of normal people (or as you put it – a non-influencer).

That’s why I titled this post “the elephant in the kitchen.” It’s the thing that everyone knows is there but that no one is supposed to talk about.

The problem is you think that MSN and Google and Yahoo are doing this stuff to be nice citizens, right? Well breaking news, they aren’t. They are doing them for money.

And, the truth is that someone who brings in 1,000 visits IS worth 1,000 times someone who only brings 1 hit into the system.

Now, the problem is, when I say “worth” I’m talking about the worth to the business. Not the worth to YOU or the worth TO YOUR FAMILY.

Obviously every human has the same worth if you’re talking about human values.

But, when MSN and Yahoo and Google (and SixApart, WordPress, Technorati) executives get together they DEFINITELY compare their numbers and their demographics and all that and then they prepare PowerPoint slides and they head off to big advertisers like General Motors and Procter and Gamble and say “you should advertise with us, look at all the buying activity you’ll get.”

Here’s another datapoint. The CEO of Printing for Less told me that not every customer is the same. For instance, if you click on the word “business cards” in Google he knows you’ll probably spend about $200. If you click on the word “four color printing” you’ll generate 10x that.

So, what does he do? He spends more in advertising to get the type who will click “four color printing.”

That person is worth more to his business.

That’s what I was trying to say.

That’s why MSN wants to call their spaces “blogs” because bloggers are worth more to advertisers.

Hope that helps clarify what I was saying when I said “worth.”

Robert,
It seems you have now resorted to making up motivations for Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! now that people have called you out on your A-list blogger elitist crap.

Mike Torres and I have blogged several times that we are more interested in getting everyone blogging and sharing their experiences with Spaces than simply catering to A-list bloggers like yourself. That’s the power of the long tail. Instead of targetting a few users with lots of readers like yourself and other A-list bloggers (i.e. the head of the tail), we’ve built a platform that millions of people with a few dozen readers can enjoy.

I guess it makes you uncomfortable to realize that a few A-list bloggers aren’t as important as millions of Z-list bloggers to us.

Bob Porter:

“I don’t pretend to be able to offer a better definition than anyone else, but I do believe advertising dollars know the difference”

You are equating professional blogging with blogging? Or those who generate money, whether it’s their sole income or not?

By your definition, only pro snowboards are snowboards. Only pro volleyball players are volleyball players. Only pro racing drivers are racing drivers.

Maybe that’s not what you meant, but it sure sounds like it. The whole point of blogging was that the amateurs and tiny guys could get in on the action, and you want to throw out everyone that doesn’t get ad dollars. Shortsighted and dumb.

Robert: You were right in your comments on my blog, and I decided I was being unfair. I edited my blog to admit and reflect the fact. I also stated it was an edited blog and why I edited it. Sorry for jumping on the “Robert bashing bandwagon.” Not sorry for thinking people here wanting to narrow the definition of blog to those who get ad money, as Bob seems to, are forgetting the whole purpose of RSS and blogging. So that everyone can be a publisher.

If you guys posting things like Bob (again, assuming I interpret his statements correctly) want a world where just a few people count or are considered bloggers, the rest not mattering, you can have it. I’d think with the large broadband providers trying to cut out the content providers and make the web inequitable that people supposedly in the know wouldn’t be trying to pull the same kind of crap, but clearly I’m wrong.

For what it’s worth:

Lots of people have Spaces accounts, Hotmail Ids and so on who never use them, link to them or share them with family and friends. I would guess that quite a few of that 200 million, like me, read about some new Microsoft free thing and decided to try it out just to see if iit was worthy of their time. I use Hotmail for situations that might collect a lot of junk mail. I keep a MSN messenger id going (using GAIM for Linux) for those one or two people I know who use nothing else, and GAIM supports Jabber, AIM and Yahoo so I have all the bases covered.

I am of NO value to Microsoft, Yahoo, or AOL advertisers, but I do keep Adwords turned on in my blog since I use Blogger and it’s trivial to do so (but I like the fact that it is not required).

I REALLY don’t think the definition of the word “blog” is important. What MIGHT be important is how various filters (like Google’s blog search) categorize things. But if anything I’m more likely to want blog results EXCLUDED than included. Blogs tend to be the “editorial page” off the Internet. I may wind up on a blog by going to Cnet looking for news, not the other way around. In any event, once I get to the news, I don’t care whether it was formated and uploaded using blogging software or some other means, why would ANYONE care?

The Blogger interface has undergone a much needed revamp and now has many of the usability improvements just introduced by Spaces. In addition it still creates web pages that are viewable by just about any web browser. I applaud the MSN effort, but the pages it produces yield errors on older browsers. One of these days Microsoft may figure out that promoting IE as “most favored browser” doesn’t necesitate making other browsers not work at all. Let the IE group fend for themselves, and put stuff out that “just works”. Do your testing on IE LAST for a few months if you have to until you get the hang of it!

Crap, is that Robert Scoble? It think it is! He’s baaack!! The best thing about Robert leaving MS is that he’s free to post this sort of thing again. Yay!

It’s increasingly apparent that the A in A-list from a blogger context stands for Arrogant. Or Authoritarian. Or just plain Asshole. unsubscribed.

who are you to define what a blog is?? there are a hell lot of blogs out there having more useful information out there. You were in my list of to-read blogs because you were with uncle bill (I am sure this is what most of your readers are here.Ever since the media mania took over you when you were leaving microsoft, you have come to assume that you were the king of blogs…stop day dreaming and post some useful stuff..rather than teaching people what a blog is. First rule on the internet is to stop being an arrogant personl. Or else you will be OWNED )

time to kick scoble out of my list…btw inspite of me visting your blog for almost a year now, I have just visited your new company website a couple of times. That will tell you that the power of your name is because of your association with MICROSOFT. Not many people are fortunate like this, thats why their blogs really dont take off.

BTW DID NOT ANYONE TEACH YOU THAT LETTERS IN CAPS MEANS YELLING AT PEOPLE. DOM’T YOU HAVE BASIC COURTESY WHILE POSTING…
end of story…

lol looks like I made lots of spelling mistakes above..sorry for that before I get owned ..

Robert – let me (one of) the first to say that I’m *not* going to unsubscribe to your blog.
To be clear, I had planned to pull the plug you for at least a month due to complete lack of interesting content, but then out of the blue you go off in this ridiculous rant. The humour is enough to keep me around for at least a few more weeks until the dust settles down. Thanks for renewing my interest!

This is crazy. I can’t believe the whole thing. I can’t believe Scoble came with it for so long. I had no idea Dare was the son of the president of Nigeria (and I had no idea I’d been reading his blog for so long and never realized it was him!)!

And i’m soooooooooooo stoned right now

Hmm I saw some of your videos on Channel 9 but this is my first visit here (via Dare).

It seems to me you may have had a point in there somewhere but you abandoned it in favour of a ‘win’.

Blogging has become a handy tool for delivering views and opinion to and from those that were otherwise inaccessible, but I’d not say that was it’s raison d’être, to me it is the social experience.

I’d say it was blogs like this, (and to an extent people like Dare) that are the exception and are really more like amateur (in a non derogatory sense) editorial newsletters than something I’d relate to as blogging.

You know how many Spaces feeds I have in my OPML file? One.

Robert’s right. Spaces is a ghost town. Unless Microsoft comes out with a standards-compliant blogging platform independent of proprietary hosting, they’re finished in this space.

This is an abomination.

Blogging has other values than how much money it earns, mostly, it has the virtue of connecting to other people. All of the flaws of blogging are exemplified by this post and the post that it refers to. It is what we used to call “flames” — stupid, thoughtless attacks on others, online.

If there were any question whether or not Robert Scoble was childish, narrowminded, egotistical, and bullying to boot, I think this post and his comments effectively proved that he is all of those things.

That an A list blogger would engage in such childish, narrowminded and yes, egotistical behavior demonstrates only that the quality of the A list is low, as it belongs to those who yell the loudest.