Bloglines doesn’t suck

Your blogging of late has gotten absolutely ridiculous. I know you can respond to that by saying, “so unsubscribe”, but frankly I hate to think that there is even one person out there that thinks you are not a marketing sl*t who just spends his time making “sexy” headlines to attract readers. Doing so you are doing what the dominant players expect you to do. You are a collaborator of the regime.

It sounds like it was more of a WordPress problem though with that random string causing each post to appear to be updated. Shouldn’t WordPress.com be looking to fix that?

Ah – I see that Matt is taking care of it… Good stuff all round.

Stef: that’s right. All I do is come out with sexy headlines. I don’t do a video every day over at scobleshow.com.

I don’t put up hundreds of OTHER PEOPLE’S BLOGS on my link blog every day. No, I don’t do that.

I don’t put up photos on my Flickr feed. Nope, all I do is write sexy headlines.

Right.

yes scoble you do all of that and we love ya for the same.

pl read our extremely novice blog and put it on your link blog if you like any of the novice article.

pretty please.

You shoulda blamed WordPress right off the bat, instead of falsely accusing Bloglines.

The only explanation for your blaming Bloglines, is you would be partially culpabale having blamed WordPress, as YOU chose WordPress for your blog.

Bottom line, Bloglines was totally innocent.

Your reaction is “so unsubscribe” and I think I finally will.

You’ve had NOTHING interesting to say since you left Microsoft. Your posts are filled with “Twitter this”, “Flickr that” and “I’d bear Google’s children if I could!”

You think the way to “force the issue” is to write an incendiary blog post, because that seems to be the only “talent” you have. You call yourself a “Tech geek blogger”, but REAL “Tech geeks” would actually _investigate_ the problem before pointing fingers.

You think it is perfectly acceptable to go around slandering individuals and companies, then post a day or few later with “oops, I’m sorry, I didn’t research this enough.” You do this time and time again, and never seem to learn to keep your pie-hole shut until you have more facts.

How about you do some research BEFORE you attack things you obviously don’t have the “Tech geek” knowledge to fully understand?

But posting well-thought-out articles wouldn’t generate enough buzz about your blog, would it? And you’re all about the buzz and your Google ranking because you seem to require constant love and attention from complete strangers. Witness your “5,000 ‘friends’” on Facebook.

Anyway, I’m sure I’m one voice screaming in a crowd that you’re a talentless hack and I’m unsubscribing, but at least I won’t have to read your mindless drivel any longer.

Grant: I +did+ investigate. I wrote to Matt Mullenweg and he immediately emailed Bloglines. They didn’t solve my problem, so I went postal because I was losing readers. This works fine over on Google Reader, so to me — as a user — the problem was with Bloglines.

This just proves that Scoble is an idiot. Just like the rest of us!

Sexy video? Since when did you start doing porn!

bytehead: you got that right!

Grant: I’ve put up 300 videos in the past year. None of which have the attributes you ascribe to me. I’ve put up 8,000 blogs on my link blog (mostly other people’s blogs). If you aren’t getting value out of that stuff maybe you just aren’t trying very hard.

Robert,
I read your blog feed using JetBrains Omea Reader 2.2 and I have seen this issue since a couple of weeks. Every time the reader tries to get updates I get 40 odd old items from your feed. I thought this was a bug in Omea but after reading your posts I think there is something wrong on your end because this is not happening to any other feeds in the reader. This is annoying to say the least. Can you check your feeds please?

You do realise that what you wrote is not an apology right?

Basically, you ranted about a product and you were proven wrong in your assumption. The adult thing to do is apologize. You were going okay, until you say “sorry, that had to do this” which is just a way of justifying your temper tantrum.

The thing is, you know perfectly well that you didn’t *have* to do this, or more precisely, you know that you could have found many more less childish ways to bring attention to this issue.

Bottom line, you may be a super-busy and important guy, but you’re not entitled to ream out a product in public and then claim that you “had to do it.” These people aren’t children — stop treating them like it.

Cheers.

Sean: OK. But I asked a week ago about this and I was losing readers because of it. Have you seen my email? I don’t think so. No one was taking care of my issues so, yes, i did take it over the top. To me Google Reader was working and Bloglines wasn’t. Turns out that it was a bug on WordPress’s side, but the result was the same: my readers were pissed off and I wasn’t getting results from either company. What do you suggest I do when I am not in charge of the technology underneath my blog and it’s broken? I already tried to go through official channels.

Robert,
Looks like you only respond to criticism. I commented before Sean about how I still get a lot of unwanted posts from your feeds, but you decided to respond to Sean’s comment. LOL what a world!

This works fine over on Google Reader, so to me — as a user — the problem was with Bloglines.

Seeing as I was only having problems in Bloglines with wordpress.com blogs, and that the issue only started when wordpress.com started shoehorning images into the feeds, I naturally assumed the problem was with wordpress.com rather than Bloglines. If you weren’t so cosy with Automattic, you’d have made the same assumption.

Ditto all the criticism about your behavior Scoble.

1/
In being so irresponsible in wielding the power of your journalistic influence WITHOUT verifying the facts you give blogging a bad name.

2/
In condemning Bloglines with the reasoning of ‘my feeds work in GR and they don’t in Bloglines, therefore Bloglines is at fault’ you’ve shown that you understand very little about how software and web services operate, i.e. the very stuff you’re supposed to be an expert on.

3/
You were worried about losing a few readers because of a technical glitch?!? I’d be far more worried about losing readers over this kind of juvenile behavior and demonstration over how little you’ve mastered the technology you write about.

In short, you really lack the blogger ethos – this type of attitude stinks of Murdoch. In no way does it demonstrate “citizen” journalism/commentary.

so, let’s see if i’ve got this right. instead of contacting someone over at the company directly, you publicly defame bloglines with your whining. and then a day later, when bloglines sees your idiotic post and sets you straight, only then do you fess up that it was a problem caused by a 3rd party. sadly, this is so typical of the talking heads blathering in the blogosphere. sigh

BJ: you missed the part where I said I notified WordPress (and they notified Bloglines and copied me) a week earlier with no results. So, if I’m not getting any results from the companies involved, what else should I do? I’d love some answers. Just sit here and sulk, I guess is your answer.

Come on, Robert, stop rationalizing.

No one is saying you shouldn’t complain, or even that you shouldn’t have raised the volume on your concern.

People are taking exception to “Bloglines sucks” title and the content of the post. You *could* have simply posted the contents of your email (which I’m sure was politely written), or posted something that says “there seems to be a problem with bloglines and/or wordpress — I’d appreciate it if someone took a look.”

There… was that difficult? Or is it simply hard to admit (without rationalizing or justifying) that you were wrong?

Sean: good point, but I’ve found I get much better results when I add a little sensationalism to my headlines.

Look at my Kindle reviews. I did six of them. Most got about 8,000 views. But the one where I was an asshat? 100,000 views.

You’re justifying your behaviour by the number of readers you get?

Dude, do you really want to be that guy? Think about that.

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2008/02/06/7479707.aspx

Scoble said: “I’ve found I get much better results when I add a little sensationalism to my headlines”
Doesn’t this make your blog nothing more than a worthless tabloid?

You are worried about losing readers because of a feed issue?

Shouldn’t you be more worried about losing readers because you’re a pompous ass?

-1 subscriber (I know you don’t care – you provide “value”).

Oh Robert, Oh Robert,

I stopped reading your blog a couple of years ago because I could no longer handle the drivel. You remind me a lower-middle management non-technical IT manager who thinks the smartest way to get things is to shout the loudest, cc everyone on your emails and ‘demand action’. Nobody likes that guy regardless of their motives. So thank you for reaffirming the fact I made the right decision a couple of years ago.

Have you thought you may have lost more readers by acting like this than you would have done with the WordPress / Bloglines issue?

P.S I still cringe at your videos on Channel 9 when you would ask questions like, “are there any other questions I should be asking you?”. Tip: prepare your questions before the interview and try listening to Scott Hanselman, that’s a guy who knows how to conduct a tech interview.