Getting Nasty with Scoble

I've been going lightly on blogs these past few days, enjoying family and friends and working in ernest on the Red Couch Table of Contents, realizing how important these things still are in the shadow of tsunami horrors.   I spoke with my new literary colleague Robert Scoble earlier today and found him a bit depressed.  It seems he's taking a few days off from blogging while he absorbs the impact of a series of unsupportive comments you can find on his recent postings. Robert is among the iron men of blogging and his taking a few days off--that's news, and a matter of concern for the thousands of us who look forward to his original, thoughtful, prolific and accurate postings.

One guy, Adrian, takes him to task for being overly supportive of Microsoft.  What a shock.  Scoble is an evangelist for Microsoft and is totally enthused about its technology,  What is newsworthy is that Scoble, at times, is among Microsoft's toughest critics. He send his readers to competing sites when he thinks they'll do better there. He may be a Microsoft enthusiast, but he's the most honest company evangelist you'll find, anywhere.  Adrian, cut him some slack, or at least praise him for his intelligent even-handed commentary over years.

I think the shot that hurt was in a comment accusing Robert of being insensitive to the horrors of the tsunamis that have killed, as of this moment, 25,000 people.  Robert enthused on how effective PubSub was as a news extraction aggregator, and noted with absolutely accuracy that the traditional news media have done a better job of reporting on events in the horror zone than has the blogging community.  People might note that the Scobleizer blog tagline is "Microsoft Geek Blogger."  "Geek" means that by his own admission, he's someone with a tendency to get caught up in the technology of things. This was probably not the best time to point out what a great job PubSub is doing.  But anyone who has read his frequent number of links and postings on what is happening, and anyone who reads Robert regularly, or like me, has the pleasure of personally knowing him will attest that he is both sensitive and thoughtful.

And by the way, in my view, when it comes to breaking news--the blogging community has a long way to go before it can dust the boots of networked news organizations.  There is a time for centralized assignments to paint factual, comprehensive stories.  Bloggers can give personal notes, both from having been in one place among the thousands of square miles affected, to add insightful commentary or relay photos and footage.  We simply will not do the job that Reuters and the New York Times are doing.

As for all these shots at Scoble, it seems to me, they are unfairly harsh.  My advice to you critics is to go pick on somebody your own size, and I think that would be a lot smaller than Robert Scoble.

Comments

[Ben]

On the one hand I do understand the reaction. If taken out of context the Roberts comments were insensitve.
You are however right. He is a very sensitive individual and this will be a perfect example for the Red Couch. Perhaps a chapter on "Is there a line, if yes, where is it and what happens if I cross it?"
The other option might be to change this into something positive. I trust Robert to have enough energy to bounce back and make something good about this. Maybe instead of writing about a small business you might consider how to use blogging to get information (good and bad) out to relatives and aid organisations in cases like this. Blogging is a global network and I think something like blogging, if used effectively could be very efficient.

[Jeremy C. Wright]

Dude. Sorry to hear about that. I wish I had some wise words of encouragement to clear the air and whatnot. But I don't.

I'd been meaning to write a "back off everyone" entry, but it got lost in the Christmas shuffle. Sorry.

[shel israel]

Thanks to both of you and for back channel email that I have forwarded to Robert. Ben, yes there are lessons here. They are relevent to blogging, but not necessarily to the book.