Back to Blogging Week (no FriendFeed/Twitter for a week?)

by Robert Scoble on June 28, 2009

Sorry for being gone so long. It’s clear I have spent too much time on social networks. Been hanging out on FriendFeed and Twitter and not blogging.

I’m not the only one, Steve Rubel, famous PR blogger, said he’s giving up his blog for lifestreaming.

Jeremiah Owyang, the other night, told me I was losing myself. Or my thought leadership or something like that. It made me wistful for good old Wordpress. So, here I am.

Starting today I won’t use FriendFeed or Twitter until Saturday.

Now, my items will still show up on Twitter and FriendFeed because of RSS and automatic posting, and your comments will get posted here thanks to Disqus, even if you leave them via FriendFeed.

On Friday Rocky and I leave for London for a trip with Traveling Geeks anyway. Check out our schedule and I’d love to meet up with you in London or Cambridge.

So, it’s time to answer a bunch of email I haven’t answered. It’s time to dig out Google Reader and Feedly and rediscover blogs. It’s time to develop some helpful content here and over on Building43 (which is rocking and rolling, by the way).

Oh, if you care about blogs, go ahead and retweet this. ;-)

  • Loved to read your blog. I would like to suggest you that traffic show most people read blogs on Mondays. So it should encourage bloggers to write new write ups over the weekend primarily.
    regards
    sears parts
  • Loved to read your blog. I would like to suggest you that traffic show most people read blogs on Mondays. So it should encourage bloggers to write new write ups over the weekend primarily.
    regards
    sears parts
  • amauiblog
    I do care about blogs and I am glad you are coming back to it. Looking forward to your posts :)
  • Hey Robert, I've been following Steve, yours and Louis Gray's discussion on lifestream, blogging and the 2010 web.

    I am of the opinion that the blog is still an important bed rock of social media. All our micromedia interactions are somewhat ethereal in nature and this, of course, lessens the value of each tweet / like etc. In the plethora of content that we are having, we need a place where our thought can come together into content that has clarity and is able to help people by providing systems, thought-through frameworks and experiences.

    Of course we all know that the cumulative effect of our social media creates influence, authority, etc. We all know that by the nature of "new", we must create new content to stay in the game - but if we truly want to add value we need blog posts like I've described above.
  • Look forward to reading you again in more than 140-character chunks.
  • @scobleizer Robert, I look forward to read your posts! :) How is it going with the #GTD workflow?
  • amitdesai
    nice article and important one as well
  • It's all about balance, I'm at about 50% reading blogs, 30% FF, and 20% Twitter on the consume side. On the publish side I try to average a blog post every other day, like/share the top couple items I come across to my FF and FF groups each day, etc. It's pretty difficult though starting low and getting broad enough exposure that the subset of serious people interested in your content can find you. Especially when you have a day job! While I only have a limited amount of time to generate content, being a "mini-connector" in the areas I'm deep on using these tools is something that I think does provide value.
  • mlstotts
    Robert - i like the idea of treating FF and Twitter as your feedburner (with comments & threads). Glad you're blogging again.
  • Some people misunderstood when I said I wasn't going to be on Twitter or FriendFeed. I said "I" wasn't going to be on Twitter or FriendFeed, not that my content wouldn't get pushed there automatically. I have so far kept off of those services, although it's very hard. I'm itching bad! :-)
  • Got admit , I'll miss your post on Friendfeed, will be interesting week without you there. However I do look forward to your longer post here and at Building43.
  • You tell me to retweet this and there is no retweet button. Oh wait, Disqus will tweet this comment, ok done.. Going to miss you on FF
  • Wow, my RSS feed is a lot more full this morning. The Scobleizer shared items feed is back.
  • Glad to see you're coming back around these parts a little now. Finding balance in life is always a good thing, as Martha Stewart might say ;)
  • Life is not always perfectly balanced. I just commented at Steven Hodson's blog, and part of what I said is as follows:

    "[F]or those of us who have multiple social media presences, there are certain times when one service will be of most benefit to us, and other times when another service will be of most benefit to us. While one could theoretically maintain an equally consistent presence in all of our outlets, the reality is that this doesn't happen. So it's perfectly understandable if someone temporarily ceases participation in one forum to devote attention to another forum."
  • Great to hear this Robert. Hope that I had a minuscule amount to do with this. I've missed your posts (and your more long form thoughts). Going to enjoy the return :).
  • I actually think this is neat. Sometimes you have to "return to your roots" so to speak to find out why things are better/worse. While I'm just kind of rediscovering FriendFeed myself, I still think blogging has a huge place in the future of the internet. I think the question will be how and what one blogs about.
  • Dave
    Hi Robert,

    A piece of constructive criticism? Try making a post without a single mention of FreindFeed or Twitter.

    Back to Blogging Week - 4 mentions of FF, 3 of Twitter.

    Real-time Systems - 12 mentions of FF, 12 of Twitter.

    Crowd Sourcing - 1 mention of FF, 2 of Twitter.

    Future of TV - 2 mentions of FF, 2 of Twitter.

    Drama v. Helpfulness - 2 mentions of Twitter.

    Cloud Camp - 1 mention of Twitter.

    -----

    I mean this to be helpful. I'm glad you enjoy spending time on these two social sites. But my tastes differ from yours. I used to enjoy reading your posts - like the one on the future of TV. But what I couldn't get around - what jumped out at me - were these mentions of FF and Twitter. (Do you know that you could have posted about Cloud Camp without that mention?)

    I'm having a hard time with all this noise some "A-listers" create anymore about these two sites. Your peer Dave Winer just posted overnight something about a NY Times reporter being kidnapped... and how it was covered up even on Wikipedia... and then? He somehow got around to speaking about one of his larger personal agendas - Twitter's list!

    ANyways, glad to see you posting this week. Hope you realize how "helpful" your blog is!
  • Dave: good criticism, but sorry, Twitter is sweeping across mainstream right now. When I went to Virginia it was the one thing I heard about. Everytime I turn on TV that's what I hear about. So, yes, I will be discussing it disproportionally to other services.
  • Excellent
  • Rocky's coming as well? Lovely ;) we have to catch up.
  • Interesting
  • boooo! you know you don't actually WANT to go back to blogging like 'the good ole days'. the conversations you start on FF are so much more robust!
  • It is ironic that the topic of the day is mob mentality on friendfeed, when you're going to be away from friendfeed for a week.
  • ka9dgx
    Welcome back to the slower paced world of deeper discussion.... here is a list of deep thoughts to ponder...

    Computer security CAN be solved... but not with virus scanners, locking down ports, firewalls, etc. A ground up rebuild based on capability based operating systems will eventually be required. (They've existed since the 1960s, so it is possible)

    The internet is not a mesh, but it should be... taking out any single node, or small number of nodes should NOT take down access for a large group of people or machines.

    SMTP - the protocol behind email, has no way to authenticate senders.... perhaps it's time to chuck it in the bin of history?

    As long as our computers aren't secure... cable and telcos will be using this as an excuse to filter our connections and censor us.... how can we change this?

    I've got more....
  • I look forward to watching and reading!
  • And, maybe commenting in the blog posts will make a come back too!
  • Yay! I missed your posts.
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