Since I’ve been blogging eight years this month I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my blog and how I want to do things differently in 2009.
I told Mike Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, that I wonder if I’ve made smart time investments in 2008 by spending so much time on Twitter and friendfeed. Yeah, I knew about the Chinese earthquake before pretty much anyone, and 45 minutes before CNN reported it, but doing that required being online with Twitter open late at night after most of you had gone to sleep or were watching some TV.
He just posted that I need a friendfeed intervention, which is why I’m writing this post.
About a month ago I asked people over on FriendFeed and the comments came in hot and heavy. Of course most of them thought I did a good thing by spending so much time on FriendFeed this year.
How much time? I told Arrington tonight that I bet it’s seven hours a day or more. I started in late February. So, that’s around 2,000 hours. What did I get for my 2,000 hour investment this year?
22,997 followers.
6,841 comments. (These are blogs and items I had something to say about, so I left a comment on them).
13,078 likes. (These are blogs and items made by other people that I wanted to share with you).
I manually followed 5,405 people. (You can see all the content they generate in real time here).
Anyway, what did I give up by spending time on Twitter and friendfeed?
- A few of my friends think I am not as good a thought leader anymore because they don’t get as many long posts as I used to do.
- If you check Compete.com you’ll see my overall traffic went down about 14% this year while FriendFeed’s traffic went up 4,056%.
- I don’t get any money from friendfeed, while on my blog I do sell ads now.
- I’m not breaking as many stories anymore so I’m showing up on TechMeme less and less.
- Arrington himself told me he is reading me less on my blog, although lots of the “A list” crowd have been showing up on friendfeed now that it has hit a certain audience size and is starting to show up on their referral logs.
What did I gain by being on friendfeed and Twitter?
- I now get a much wider-range of news and am available to a wider range of people.
- My words now get indexed by the two most popular “real-time web” search engines: Twitter Search and friendfeed search. I know people who get their news by visiting Twitter search and looking at what news is “trending,” or becoming more popular.
- I am now part of the conversation in a way that I’d never be if I were just blogging. Seth Godin, for instance, only blogs and he rarely gets discussed on Twitter or friendfeed. If he were active he’d be discussed 25x more.
- I’ve made a lot of friends that are just reading me on twitter, I’ve met many people at Tweetups and the like that I’d never have met if I weren’t so active.
- By being active I’ve been quoted in countless articles about Twitter or friendfeed, which helps me too.
- Because I listen to the conversation I am getting better video interviews. Compete.com shows that FastCompany.TV is growing nicely this year and has taken up the slack for my blog. Add that into all my new readers on Twitter and friendfeed and I’m happy about my total readership. Seagate deserves a lot of thanks there for sponsoring FastCompany.TV back when there were no viewers.
- I now have a new news source that other bloggers won’t have: a crowd of 5,400 people who are bringing me the best news from around the web in real time. Already I’m seeing stuff there that will turn into blog posts and insights that other people aren’t seeing. Because I’ve build relationships with many of these people over the past year they call me and warn me about important news before they call other people. This “funnel” of news could be a sizeable advantage for someone trying to compete in a very competitive space.
- I now have a list of 23,000 people on friendfeed and 44,692 on Twitter that I can show potential sponsors. Before all I could say is my monthly uniques.
- In friendfeed Mike Arrington has 15,108 followers and I have 22,999. Mike has a LOT more blog readers than I have, so he should have dramatically more followers than I have on friendfeed. But by participating in these services I have collected more subscribers. Do they offset the same number of blog readers I’d have if I spent so much time blogging instead of hanging out on friendfeed? That’s the question that got Mike and I to talk.
Why does this all matter? Well, if you are going to do this as a business you’ve got to prove how many readers you have and demonstrate both audience size as well as influence.
The other thing that advertisers are asking me for is quantitative data about who is reading me. Some companies now don’t want to reach geeks, for instance. So, they are looking at your social networks to see what kind of audience you’ve attracted.
So, what do you think? Do I need a friendfeed intervention? Looking forward to having a good conversation. Of COURSE we are talking about this on friendfeed. In fact, in multiple places. 🙂
Scobleizer 
Even Om Malik seems to be convinced about FriendFeed and has jumped into the fray by partipating on it recently – http://friendfeed.com/gigaom/comments
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Even Om Malik seems to be convinced about FriendFeed and has jumped into the fray by partipating on it recently – http://friendfeed.com/gigaom/comments
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Robert, I have to agree with Mike here. Nothing replaces a good thoughtful blog piece from a great writer like yourself. I know I am probably not the only one that has personally missed that steady stream of posting over the past year.
If I were you, I would seriously decrease the amount of time on both Twitter and FriendFeed. The content you post there isn’t nearly as important as a thoughtful blog post; on the contrary, it’s very forgettable content. It’s understandable to spend some time on both those services but seven hours just doesn’t seem logical.
Focus on your blog and make that your top priority. I miss the regular updates and would love to see them back in the near future.
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Robert, I have to agree with Mike here. Nothing replaces a good thoughtful blog piece from a great writer like yourself. I know I am probably not the only one that has personally missed that steady stream of posting over the past year.
If I were you, I would seriously decrease the amount of time on both Twitter and FriendFeed. The content you post there isn’t nearly as important as a thoughtful blog post; on the contrary, it’s very forgettable content. It’s understandable to spend some time on both those services but seven hours just doesn’t seem logical.
Focus on your blog and make that your top priority. I miss the regular updates and would love to see them back in the near future.
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I think posting the entire “twitter & friendfeed discussions” would have solved the problem.
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There is no one way to use a service, and how you spend your time is up to you. In 2008, you felt that your time was best spent Tweeting and FriendFeeding, and it has diversified your audience in a big way. You have been exposed and participating with a significant audience that doesn’t participate on Techmeme and isn’t near the A-List.
Saying you spend too much time FriendFeeding is like telling Mike that he spends too much time blogging, or that Chris Brogan does too many speaking events.
And as someone who is just as invested in FriendFeed as you are, and started earlier, you’d be surprised how little time is actually needed, versus other activities. I’ve been tracking it since November 7th.
http://wakoopa.com/louisgray/usage
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I think posting the entire “twitter & friendfeed discussions” would have solved the problem.
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There is no one way to use a service, and how you spend your time is up to you. In 2008, you felt that your time was best spent Tweeting and FriendFeeding, and it has diversified your audience in a big way. You have been exposed and participating with a significant audience that doesn’t participate on Techmeme and isn’t near the A-List.
Saying you spend too much time FriendFeeding is like telling Mike that he spends too much time blogging, or that Chris Brogan does too many speaking events.
And as someone who is just as invested in FriendFeed as you are, and started earlier, you’d be surprised how little time is actually needed, versus other activities. I’ve been tracking it since November 7th.
http://wakoopa.com/louisgray/usage
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Probably in few months time a google search for Robert Scoble will show your friendfeed and twitter feeds as the top 2 results
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Probably in few months time a google search for Robert Scoble will show your friendfeed and twitter feeds as the top 2 results
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Twitter and FriendFeed are like snippets of cocktail party conversation that inevitably lead back to a blog post or online article. I hear and generate a lot more variety but I also find myself spending too much time in “snippet” mode and not enough time in ‘article” mode.
If you are comfortable with commenting on the news more instead of making it, then keep on doing what you are doing. If it is driving business and results for you then more power to you! I will say that I very rarely read the blog anymore but I don’t feel any less connected.
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Twitter and FriendFeed are like snippets of cocktail party conversation that inevitably lead back to a blog post or online article. I hear and generate a lot more variety but I also find myself spending too much time in “snippet” mode and not enough time in ‘article” mode.
If you are comfortable with commenting on the news more instead of making it, then keep on doing what you are doing. If it is driving business and results for you then more power to you! I will say that I very rarely read the blog anymore but I don’t feel any less connected.
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Robert,
I tend to agree more with Mike on this one. Spending a lot of time on either platform can harm your “zen”.
So many people have online assistants nowadays, that deal with the immense flow of information every day, so you can actually focus on the information you need and can get a real value out of.
You can still interact with the ones around quite well, as a matter of fact I myself had a couple of good conversations with you, courtesy of Twitter.
So I recommend organizing your information flow and taking some time for yourself & family.
Otherwise you’ll regret it later. I know that for a fact.
Lorand
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Robert,
I tend to agree more with Mike on this one. Spending a lot of time on either platform can harm your “zen”.
So many people have online assistants nowadays, that deal with the immense flow of information every day, so you can actually focus on the information you need and can get a real value out of.
You can still interact with the ones around quite well, as a matter of fact I myself had a couple of good conversations with you, courtesy of Twitter.
So I recommend organizing your information flow and taking some time for yourself & family.
Otherwise you’ll regret it later. I know that for a fact.
Lorand
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stop caring about sponsors and advertisers, they’re all poor now anyway and nobody can create a better product for you to sell/promote than if you create one yourself!
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stop caring about sponsors and advertisers, they’re all poor now anyway and nobody can create a better product for you to sell/promote than if you create one yourself!
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Wow! That’s an awful lot of time to spend – especially for a decrease in traffic.
I think Hany has a point with the originality of content. In fact, this is the first time I’ve ever been on this website and now that I have a “feel” for it – I will bookmark and return often. I don’t need to see you or find you on Twitter or Friendfeed to know that your opinions and analysis of news events carry far and wide.
It sounds to me like FriendFeed is making a shellacking off of your expertise.
Why continue to feed the obese golden goose and starve yourself?
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Wow! That’s an awful lot of time to spend – especially for a decrease in traffic.
I think Hany has a point with the originality of content. In fact, this is the first time I’ve ever been on this website and now that I have a “feel” for it – I will bookmark and return often. I don’t need to see you or find you on Twitter or Friendfeed to know that your opinions and analysis of news events carry far and wide.
It sounds to me like FriendFeed is making a shellacking off of your expertise.
Why continue to feed the obese golden goose and starve yourself?
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RE: “I knew about the Chinese earthquake before pretty much anyone”: How does that matter? Not trying to dig, just trying to understand how/why it matters to know about an earthquake on the other side of the world 45 minutes before eveyone else. To me, that’s a sign of more than one problem.
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RE: “I knew about the Chinese earthquake before pretty much anyone”: How does that matter? Not trying to dig, just trying to understand how/why it matters to know about an earthquake on the other side of the world 45 minutes before eveyone else. To me, that’s a sign of more than one problem.
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chrisco: I’m a news junkie. Always have been. I ran the Associated Press wire machine in college just so I’d be the first to know stuff. That’s the definition of news, by the way. “new” is in the word. News isn’t news after everyone already knows it, so if you want to be in the “news” business you’ve gotta be among the first to know something. Otherwise you have no value in the news business.
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chrisco: I’m a news junkie. Always have been. I ran the Associated Press wire machine in college just so I’d be the first to know stuff. That’s the definition of news, by the way. “new” is in the word. News isn’t news after everyone already knows it, so if you want to be in the “news” business you’ve gotta be among the first to know something. Otherwise you have no value in the news business.
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Robert
Gotta side with Mike on this one, I miss your longer pieces on the blog, thats what I followed Robert Scoble for, not the sound bytes or the 140 characters on twitter.
I find Friendfeed way too much work and I just dont have the bandwidth to consume that much information (twitter is hard enough already)
Would love to see you blogging more and whilstI know you break the stories before most people they are in short bursts and I am really unsure what your analysis of those stories are.
Looking forward to seeing you back on the blog more in 2009.
Have a great Christmas.
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Robert
Gotta side with Mike on this one, I miss your longer pieces on the blog, thats what I followed Robert Scoble for, not the sound bytes or the 140 characters on twitter.
I find Friendfeed way too much work and I just dont have the bandwidth to consume that much information (twitter is hard enough already)
Would love to see you blogging more and whilstI know you break the stories before most people they are in short bursts and I am really unsure what your analysis of those stories are.
Looking forward to seeing you back on the blog more in 2009.
Have a great Christmas.
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For once, I agree with Mike. Twitter and FF simply aren’t worth the time you spend on them. Blogging is just much better.
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For once, I agree with Mike. Twitter and FF simply aren’t worth the time you spend on them. Blogging is just much better.
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Robert, all I urge you is to follow people who you are interested in, take a look at a profile and make a a decision, is this person talking about anything i’m interested, is there one post in ten that piques my interest? if you answer yes then follow them back. Stop following back every huckster, carpetbagger, and MLM spammer that twitter attracts. Follow people who make you smarter.
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Robert, all I urge you is to follow people who you are interested in, take a look at a profile and make a a decision, is this person talking about anything i’m interested, is there one post in ten that piques my interest? if you answer yes then follow them back. Stop following back every huckster, carpetbagger, and MLM spammer that twitter attracts. Follow people who make you smarter.
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I think it’s all about where people are commenting. I have noticed that the comments and feedback from my photos and blogs has moved to FriendFeed. That is where the conversation is, so that is where I have moved my attention. As a result, most of my commenting on other’s work moved to FriendFeed too.
It’s only in the last month that I have re-started the effort to comment at source. If I have anything more than a few short words to say about a post or photo, I’ll do it on the blog. Otherwise it’s FriendFeed.
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I think it’s all about where people are commenting. I have noticed that the comments and feedback from my photos and blogs has moved to FriendFeed. That is where the conversation is, so that is where I have moved my attention. As a result, most of my commenting on other’s work moved to FriendFeed too.
It’s only in the last month that I have re-started the effort to comment at source. If I have anything more than a few short words to say about a post or photo, I’ll do it on the blog. Otherwise it’s FriendFeed.
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I used to be an avid reader of your blog but I have to say over the past few months the activity has been so sporadic that I rarely check it out and have toyed with the idea of removing it from my feed list ( which I’m sure you’ll not loose sleep over ). I have to say the only reason I’m on it today was to see if there was a response to Arrington’s “friendfeed addiction” claim.
I never got hooked on friendfeed or twitter as I’m not that interested in what people are doing every minute of every day, I’d rather meet up or pick up the phone and participate in a good old fashioned chin wag. Don’t get me wrong I’m a passionate technologist but I feel that yourself and others ( Techcrunch included ) are doing nothing for the tech industry when you bypass news of the latest innovations and exciting start-ups in favour of reporting on [ yet another ] site that you can update multiple twitter accounts or embed friendfeed into your facebook profile.
I think the phrase “get a life” is too strong and not that relevant here however “get your life back” fits perfectly
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I used to be an avid reader of your blog but I have to say over the past few months the activity has been so sporadic that I rarely check it out and have toyed with the idea of removing it from my feed list ( which I’m sure you’ll not loose sleep over ). I have to say the only reason I’m on it today was to see if there was a response to Arrington’s “friendfeed addiction” claim.
I never got hooked on friendfeed or twitter as I’m not that interested in what people are doing every minute of every day, I’d rather meet up or pick up the phone and participate in a good old fashioned chin wag. Don’t get me wrong I’m a passionate technologist but I feel that yourself and others ( Techcrunch included ) are doing nothing for the tech industry when you bypass news of the latest innovations and exciting start-ups in favour of reporting on [ yet another ] site that you can update multiple twitter accounts or embed friendfeed into your facebook profile.
I think the phrase “get a life” is too strong and not that relevant here however “get your life back” fits perfectly
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(Similar posted at TechCrunch)
Conversations are nice, at times. But when you’re a leader on a particular topic (tech trends, aircraft engineering, wine, whatever), you’re frequently at your best when you trust your talent and dial back the feedback from others. You might just be spending valuable mind resources on quasi-relevant banter with folks who add little to your day. If that comes off as an arrogant statement, so be it. Those around you can deal with it, or move on. If you’re legit, they already know it.
Again, I’m not calling out everybody on FriendFeed. But I’m willing to bet that you could dial it back significantly and see a return to form very quickly.
Leaders.
Talent.
And let it be known that I am completely on board with Twitter as a service. I’m embracing it. But I hope that it will not detract from what could be quality writing by the folks using it.
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(Similar posted at TechCrunch)
Conversations are nice, at times. But when you’re a leader on a particular topic (tech trends, aircraft engineering, wine, whatever), you’re frequently at your best when you trust your talent and dial back the feedback from others. You might just be spending valuable mind resources on quasi-relevant banter with folks who add little to your day. If that comes off as an arrogant statement, so be it. Those around you can deal with it, or move on. If you’re legit, they already know it.
Again, I’m not calling out everybody on FriendFeed. But I’m willing to bet that you could dial it back significantly and see a return to form very quickly.
Leaders.
Talent.
And let it be known that I am completely on board with Twitter as a service. I’m embracing it. But I hope that it will not detract from what could be quality writing by the folks using it.
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A lot of people like Britney–the numbers show that. Doesn’t make it healthy, now does it? (Well, maybe for her, but even then, heh).
What a healthy business you’ve become.
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A lot of people like Britney–the numbers show that. Doesn’t make it healthy, now does it? (Well, maybe for her, but even then, heh).
What a healthy business you’ve become.
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You guys crack me up.
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You guys crack me up.
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Robert 🙂
Do take some time to read this, it’s not 140 words. It’s a blog comment 🙂
I would think that both you and Mike have your own valid points, and I imagine that neither of you is wrong because each believes in different perspective at this point of time. But both of you are on a common topic, what is a better use of time?
Seriously speaking, I think Mike is trying to advise you to focus on the long term side of the equation minus the short term sacrifice effect (losing some blog readers due to less posts). He meant good, just it’s been made public. Good thinking topic though for the audience by the ringside *Winks*
How does the comparison goes?
It’s not totally comparable, A is A like Ayn Rand’s philosophy.
Blogging is A, FF and Twitter is B.
Blog posts stay for a “very long time” on the web and is searchable, sort of running like autopilot. FF and Twitter posts have a short lifespan, it seems to me more like a Instant Messenge (MSN) on steroids, reaching those online with a single click and message.
Blog posts reaches people who are not (not yet) connected to you on Friendfeed and Twitter. You on the other hand, I would think have seen another side of things…two words, Potential and Enjoyment.
IMAGINE:
Let’s say a person has 50k RSS readers only (without any other social media sidekicks) and he writes a new blog post asking for action on a cause which needs immediate attention, let’s say donate to the Earthquake victims. Would it be useful by the time everyone on RSS (very very optimistic to say “every”, more like 30-40%) decides to read your post and by the time they react, like a week later, the sense of urgency in the post is already gone. Result, small impact.
NOW,
If the same person has 50k RSS readers, 50K Friendfeed friends, 50K Twitter friends and he writes a blog post about the urgency of the Earthquake situation, scheduled Tweets on Twitter around the clock (automated) and asks for action for his Friendfeed friends to action upon the situation. Ask them to DIGG, STUMBLEUPON, Propeller, Reddit and all that arsenal of weapons to up the rating of that post and because that person actually does chat with his friends on Friendfeed and Twitter, established a relationship and trust between a few thousand of his online friends over the years…
WHAT HAPPENS?
Like Warren Buffet’s book title…it snowballs, a small blog post followed by an avalanche of actions, some we may not even expect but because of the genius of one of your contacts, did something totally unexpected.
Using the Earthquake example, he may have a friend whose family in at the Earthquake zone and because he got the information quickly, he could assemble his own superman efforts to bring a whole gang of rescuers (who are not Techfans or use the internet regularly) to the scene. That would make an impact, perhaps save many more lives. (Trapped Earthquake victims need to be saved fast, the longer the delay, the less chance of survival.)
SUMMARY
Think of it this way, a Blog is like a Newspaper, a one way communication for everyone who is interested, Friendfeed and Twitter is like SMS to friends who exchange information, two way communication.
A post from a newspaper is like “Oic, that’s what happened.” while a SMS from a mobile phone is “OMG, let’s do something about it right now!”
To simplify things, I would think it is a wise thing to keep the “blog-newspaper” readership healthy enough to be satisfied, while growing the “Social Media-SMS” relationships close. As friends, we HELP each other, as readers, people tend to be observers and want to LEARN from you.
A solution? Perhaps turn those short Tweets and posts into a long enough Blog Articles at the end of the day as a summary.
So hurray, Robert can carry on doing what he enjoys and thinks if good, Mike can also carry on doing what he is good at and enjoys.
*Big Smile*
Be on friendly terms again my brothers 🙂 lolz, it was fun while the “battle” lasted.
Your Friend from Singapore
Maynas Eric
(I’ll post this on Mike’s blog too)
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Robert 🙂
Do take some time to read this, it’s not 140 words. It’s a blog comment 🙂
I would think that both you and Mike have your own valid points, and I imagine that neither of you is wrong because each believes in different perspective at this point of time. But both of you are on a common topic, what is a better use of time?
Seriously speaking, I think Mike is trying to advise you to focus on the long term side of the equation minus the short term sacrifice effect (losing some blog readers due to less posts). He meant good, just it’s been made public. Good thinking topic though for the audience by the ringside *Winks*
How does the comparison goes?
It’s not totally comparable, A is A like Ayn Rand’s philosophy.
Blogging is A, FF and Twitter is B.
Blog posts stay for a “very long time” on the web and is searchable, sort of running like autopilot. FF and Twitter posts have a short lifespan, it seems to me more like a Instant Messenge (MSN) on steroids, reaching those online with a single click and message.
Blog posts reaches people who are not (not yet) connected to you on Friendfeed and Twitter. You on the other hand, I would think have seen another side of things…two words, Potential and Enjoyment.
IMAGINE:
Let’s say a person has 50k RSS readers only (without any other social media sidekicks) and he writes a new blog post asking for action on a cause which needs immediate attention, let’s say donate to the Earthquake victims. Would it be useful by the time everyone on RSS (very very optimistic to say “every”, more like 30-40%) decides to read your post and by the time they react, like a week later, the sense of urgency in the post is already gone. Result, small impact.
NOW,
If the same person has 50k RSS readers, 50K Friendfeed friends, 50K Twitter friends and he writes a blog post about the urgency of the Earthquake situation, scheduled Tweets on Twitter around the clock (automated) and asks for action for his Friendfeed friends to action upon the situation. Ask them to DIGG, STUMBLEUPON, Propeller, Reddit and all that arsenal of weapons to up the rating of that post and because that person actually does chat with his friends on Friendfeed and Twitter, established a relationship and trust between a few thousand of his online friends over the years…
WHAT HAPPENS?
Like Warren Buffet’s book title…it snowballs, a small blog post followed by an avalanche of actions, some we may not even expect but because of the genius of one of your contacts, did something totally unexpected.
Using the Earthquake example, he may have a friend whose family in at the Earthquake zone and because he got the information quickly, he could assemble his own superman efforts to bring a whole gang of rescuers (who are not Techfans or use the internet regularly) to the scene. That would make an impact, perhaps save many more lives. (Trapped Earthquake victims need to be saved fast, the longer the delay, the less chance of survival.)
SUMMARY
Think of it this way, a Blog is like a Newspaper, a one way communication for everyone who is interested, Friendfeed and Twitter is like SMS to friends who exchange information, two way communication.
A post from a newspaper is like “Oic, that’s what happened.” while a SMS from a mobile phone is “OMG, let’s do something about it right now!”
To simplify things, I would think it is a wise thing to keep the “blog-newspaper” readership healthy enough to be satisfied, while growing the “Social Media-SMS” relationships close. As friends, we HELP each other, as readers, people tend to be observers and want to LEARN from you.
A solution? Perhaps turn those short Tweets and posts into a long enough Blog Articles at the end of the day as a summary.
So hurray, Robert can carry on doing what he enjoys and thinks if good, Mike can also carry on doing what he is good at and enjoys.
*Big Smile*
Be on friendly terms again my brothers 🙂 lolz, it was fun while the “battle” lasted.
Your Friend from Singapore
Maynas Eric
(I’ll post this on Mike’s blog too)
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Robert,
From entrepreneur’s perspective, I would rather get more content from you here.
Although I would very much like to follow you and participate on friendfeed and twitter, I can only dedicate so much of my focused, daily time to “news.” (Right now its 2 hrs) So staying in one place, Google reader, and going through my daily blog roll is much more effective. Also, it takes significant time and effort to really use these services well, which in my case, again, investment that I cannot afford right now. (Which was btw Seth Godin’s reason for not using them. Link below)
So I guess I can say that I’m “suffering” from your addiction and will support intervention to have you fully back here in 2009. 🙂
Happy holidays and greetings from Russia!
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/02/not-seth-godin.html
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Robert,
From entrepreneur’s perspective, I would rather get more content from you here.
Although I would very much like to follow you and participate on friendfeed and twitter, I can only dedicate so much of my focused, daily time to “news.” (Right now its 2 hrs) So staying in one place, Google reader, and going through my daily blog roll is much more effective. Also, it takes significant time and effort to really use these services well, which in my case, again, investment that I cannot afford right now. (Which was btw Seth Godin’s reason for not using them. Link below)
So I guess I can say that I’m “suffering” from your addiction and will support intervention to have you fully back here in 2009. 🙂
Happy holidays and greetings from Russia!
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/02/not-seth-godin.html
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do both.
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do both.
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I have my own set of obsessions/addictions, and whenever I see myself crossing the line I ask myself: How would I “suffer” more? Staying without X (FriendFeed in your case) for three full days, or not seeing/talking to my wife and/or children for three days?
Depending on your answer, you may or may not need that intervention and may have crossed the line, not between hobby/interest and addiction, but between addiction and obsession. I think being addicted to something is usually not a bad thing (we’re not talking drugs here), but being obsessed it often is.
BTW if your answer is that you’ve been without seeing your family for three days in a row but it was ok because you could contact them via FriendFeed, then I leave to someone else to do the analysis.
Having said that, do what you like doing as long as you know what your priorities are and stick to them.
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I have my own set of obsessions/addictions, and whenever I see myself crossing the line I ask myself: How would I “suffer” more? Staying without X (FriendFeed in your case) for three full days, or not seeing/talking to my wife and/or children for three days?
Depending on your answer, you may or may not need that intervention and may have crossed the line, not between hobby/interest and addiction, but between addiction and obsession. I think being addicted to something is usually not a bad thing (we’re not talking drugs here), but being obsessed it often is.
BTW if your answer is that you’ve been without seeing your family for three days in a row but it was ok because you could contact them via FriendFeed, then I leave to someone else to do the analysis.
Having said that, do what you like doing as long as you know what your priorities are and stick to them.
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You knowing about the Chinese earthquake 45 minutes earlier than everyone else didn’t make you more productive. It didn’t give you any original thoughts, and it didn’t end up with any original contribution from you. So in that sense, yes, your Twitter/FF addiction isn’t a good thing.
Everyone’s information life breaks down into three parts. First, writing something which is, to a lesser or greater degree, original – and that’s covered off by blogging. Second, there’s discovering and surfacing other information for your friends: that’s covered by tools like Google Reader’s shared items, and (to a less efficient degree, I think) by FF. Then there’s discussion, which is covered by both blog comments and FF.
How you mix what you do from these three elements will depend on what you enjoy, and what you enjoy changes. You’ve had a year when discussing and discovery have been more interesting to you than synthesising ideas into an original post. That’s cool – it’s a perfectly fine thing to do, if it’s what you enjoy.
Personally, I’d like to see a little more of the blogging-Scoble than the Twittering-Scoble. But don’t worry about it – isn’t the point of this kind of new media that you begin with the audience of one which is yourself?
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You knowing about the Chinese earthquake 45 minutes earlier than everyone else didn’t make you more productive. It didn’t give you any original thoughts, and it didn’t end up with any original contribution from you. So in that sense, yes, your Twitter/FF addiction isn’t a good thing.
Everyone’s information life breaks down into three parts. First, writing something which is, to a lesser or greater degree, original – and that’s covered off by blogging. Second, there’s discovering and surfacing other information for your friends: that’s covered by tools like Google Reader’s shared items, and (to a less efficient degree, I think) by FF. Then there’s discussion, which is covered by both blog comments and FF.
How you mix what you do from these three elements will depend on what you enjoy, and what you enjoy changes. You’ve had a year when discussing and discovery have been more interesting to you than synthesising ideas into an original post. That’s cool – it’s a perfectly fine thing to do, if it’s what you enjoy.
Personally, I’d like to see a little more of the blogging-Scoble than the Twittering-Scoble. But don’t worry about it – isn’t the point of this kind of new media that you begin with the audience of one which is yourself?
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Without evolution there is stagnation and as a thought leader you are putting your money where your mouth is which is to be admired and the reason people read you in the first place.
I’ve not been on Twitter or FriendFeed very long but it’s because I joined I found you and your blog and those of your cronies and have learned so much as a result.
I’m not sure it matters where the buzz is as long as there is one and I’m certain that will happen wherever you are.
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Without evolution there is stagnation and as a thought leader you are putting your money where your mouth is which is to be admired and the reason people read you in the first place.
I’ve not been on Twitter or FriendFeed very long but it’s because I joined I found you and your blog and those of your cronies and have learned so much as a result.
I’m not sure it matters where the buzz is as long as there is one and I’m certain that will happen wherever you are.
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Ditto Jeremy. Thought the TechCrunch comments were the funniest I’ve seen there in a long time. Robert – If you’re making a decent buck and enjoying what you’re doing (and healthy), you’re doing 99% better than most. You could be addicted to something worse 🙂 Have fun.
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Ditto Jeremy. Thought the TechCrunch comments were the funniest I’ve seen there in a long time. Robert – If you’re making a decent buck and enjoying what you’re doing (and healthy), you’re doing 99% better than most. You could be addicted to something worse 🙂 Have fun.
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Scoble rocks! You are just one man, what do people expect of you? Mate, enjoy life and have lots of fun and make lots of friends. You only need more ‘traffic’ if you need more money. I am confident you are a fair bit smarter than most people, so I’m sure you will make the right choices.
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Scoble rocks! You are just one man, what do people expect of you? Mate, enjoy life and have lots of fun and make lots of friends. You only need more ‘traffic’ if you need more money. I am confident you are a fair bit smarter than most people, so I’m sure you will make the right choices.
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I’d like to see you blog more Robert – I agree with Michael that when you do blog considered posts they’re usually very well thought out and are thought leadership. that’s what you can bring to the community more than time spent on FF and I think it’s of greater benefit to your long term brand.
I would have been great to see you co-collaborating with Shel again on his new book as lots you can add there I’m sure.
One other thing – I never really watched any of the video interviews since you left Microsoft. The format didn’t translate for me outside of the borg but that maybe just me…on the other hand, your Fast company stuff has been great and I think you can bring a lot to them beyond videos.
anyway…happy holidays to your, Maryam, Milan and Patrick!
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I’d like to see you blog more Robert – I agree with Michael that when you do blog considered posts they’re usually very well thought out and are thought leadership. that’s what you can bring to the community more than time spent on FF and I think it’s of greater benefit to your long term brand.
I would have been great to see you co-collaborating with Shel again on his new book as lots you can add there I’m sure.
One other thing – I never really watched any of the video interviews since you left Microsoft. The format didn’t translate for me outside of the borg but that maybe just me…on the other hand, your Fast company stuff has been great and I think you can bring a lot to them beyond videos.
anyway…happy holidays to your, Maryam, Milan and Patrick!
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I think we’ll see retro Scobleizer return but with an expanded focus. I blogged about it here.
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I think we’ll see retro Scobleizer return but with an expanded focus. I blogged about it here.
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Robert, I would second Charlie’s comment: if you are happy, then you are doing the right thing. As a user, I think that your best work is not breaking news or commenting but great 10-20 video interviews. Example: you can let XYZ break the news that Facebook is going to have HD video and focus on getting a 20-minute interview with the facebook dev team on why and how they did it, etc.. Happy holidays.
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Robert, I would second Charlie’s comment: if you are happy, then you are doing the right thing. As a user, I think that your best work is not breaking news or commenting but great 10-20 video interviews. Example: you can let XYZ break the news that Facebook is going to have HD video and focus on getting a 20-minute interview with the facebook dev team on why and how they did it, etc.. Happy holidays.
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I am planning on doing exactly the same as you. I haven’t explored FriendFeed because I thought it was just your feeds overthere. I would have to go take a look at this friendfeed. But as far as Twitter. In just 23 days I have almost 70 followers. But I did stop blogging. But I don’t really care about blogging I want to self promote myself.
You are my icon scobleizer.
regards: rizzy
http://twitter.com/rizzy81
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I am planning on doing exactly the same as you. I haven’t explored FriendFeed because I thought it was just your feeds overthere. I would have to go take a look at this friendfeed. But as far as Twitter. In just 23 days I have almost 70 followers. But I did stop blogging. But I don’t really care about blogging I want to self promote myself.
You are my icon scobleizer.
regards: rizzy
http://twitter.com/rizzy81
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Mike hasen’t noticed your videos, does that tell us more about Mike or your videos?
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Mike hasen’t noticed your videos, does that tell us more about Mike or your videos?
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I miss blogging Scoble too. I have spent the equivalent of days following you around on FF and Twitter, but I just don’t have time to do that on a daily basis, so I miss a lot. I love your original thoughts on the blog, then if I want to find more, I can go searching. There has to be a happy medium. But I suppose if the happy medium for you is the way you are working it now, that’s the most important thing. Who am I/we to tell you where to focus your efforts?
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I miss blogging Scoble too. I have spent the equivalent of days following you around on FF and Twitter, but I just don’t have time to do that on a daily basis, so I miss a lot. I love your original thoughts on the blog, then if I want to find more, I can go searching. There has to be a happy medium. But I suppose if the happy medium for you is the way you are working it now, that’s the most important thing. Who am I/we to tell you where to focus your efforts?
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if seth godin showed up on friendfeed he’d get dissed 25x’s more 🙂 , nt discussed
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if seth godin showed up on friendfeed he’d get dissed 25x’s more 🙂 , nt discussed
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I think that there will be a revival for blog articles. Myself, I have stopped reading tweets. I use Friedfeed to follow about 40 blogs. Thats it.
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I think that there will be a revival for blog articles. Myself, I have stopped reading tweets. I use Friedfeed to follow about 40 blogs. Thats it.
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Robert,
My goal isn’t to be discussed more. It’s to launch ideas and to make a difference. Other people are doing a great job of spreading those ideas into media that they enjoy and I think that’s fabulous.
As Gregory pointed out, I’m in no need of more dissing.
Some people are very good at short and quick bits of feedback and interaction with small groups of people. I find I do better when I’m a little longer and a little slower. And some of my colleagues need a month or a year between bursts. Different strokes.
You should be flattered by the people who want you to write more. We miss your bold leadership–leaps, not just increments.
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Robert,
My goal isn’t to be discussed more. It’s to launch ideas and to make a difference. Other people are doing a great job of spreading those ideas into media that they enjoy and I think that’s fabulous.
As Gregory pointed out, I’m in no need of more dissing.
Some people are very good at short and quick bits of feedback and interaction with small groups of people. I find I do better when I’m a little longer and a little slower. And some of my colleagues need a month or a year between bursts. Different strokes.
You should be flattered by the people who want you to write more. We miss your bold leadership–leaps, not just increments.
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I’ve been mulling over many of these same issues, and I’ve resisted spending a lot of time on Twitter or FriendFeed because they are so time-consuming and divide my attention a little too much.
I think part of it depends on who you want to reach, as opposed to who your advertisers want to reach. I know I could spend a lot of time on Twitter and FriendFeed and increase all kinds of stats and connections, but I’d be reaching early adopters there, and I’ve come to the conclusion that’s not the audience I want to reach anymore. I want to help the middle of the bell curve, so I need to get back to blogging. Granted, I’m not running my blog as a business, but I think you should take audience into consideration, too. Who do you want to influence and affect the most?
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I’ve been mulling over many of these same issues, and I’ve resisted spending a lot of time on Twitter or FriendFeed because they are so time-consuming and divide my attention a little too much.
I think part of it depends on who you want to reach, as opposed to who your advertisers want to reach. I know I could spend a lot of time on Twitter and FriendFeed and increase all kinds of stats and connections, but I’d be reaching early adopters there, and I’ve come to the conclusion that’s not the audience I want to reach anymore. I want to help the middle of the bell curve, so I need to get back to blogging. Granted, I’m not running my blog as a business, but I think you should take audience into consideration, too. Who do you want to influence and affect the most?
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Well, I follow you on Twitter and, like most people I follow, I find some posts of interest and most not…which I think is normal. I think this might be the first time I visit your blog, ironically because someone else I follow (@graywolf) posted a link to the TechCrunch article – 3 degrees of separation.
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Well, I follow you on Twitter and, like most people I follow, I find some posts of interest and most not…which I think is normal. I think this might be the first time I visit your blog, ironically because someone else I follow (@graywolf) posted a link to the TechCrunch article – 3 degrees of separation.
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As someone who is more interested in the qualitative end of things, well we could talk about this—but only if our actual paths ever crossed. I have like 16 followers on Twitter and don’t get the point of FF. Doesn’t make me any less interesting, just less accessible I guess. I appreciate those who make more of an investment in areas that I do not; makes for good reads.
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As someone who is more interested in the qualitative end of things, well we could talk about this—but only if our actual paths ever crossed. I have like 16 followers on Twitter and don’t get the point of FF. Doesn’t make me any less interesting, just less accessible I guess. I appreciate those who make more of an investment in areas that I do not; makes for good reads.
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Robert – only you can decide what’s the best use of your time of course, but I think you *contribute* more with blog posts than by being a super-connected part of the conversation.
Blog: Conversation starter, thought leader. Influencer.
Micro-blogging: Conversation continuer, super-connected, know news first.
Also, if a big part of the value you get from Twitter/FF is knowing the news first, you could probably find a way to track the term “breaking”. Heck, at your income level you could just HIRE someone to look for things you’d find interesting and ping you with ’em.
Good luck with it!
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Robert – only you can decide what’s the best use of your time of course, but I think you *contribute* more with blog posts than by being a super-connected part of the conversation.
Blog: Conversation starter, thought leader. Influencer.
Micro-blogging: Conversation continuer, super-connected, know news first.
Also, if a big part of the value you get from Twitter/FF is knowing the news first, you could probably find a way to track the term “breaking”. Heck, at your income level you could just HIRE someone to look for things you’d find interesting and ping you with ’em.
Good luck with it!
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“Why does this all matter? Well, if you are going to do this as a business you’ve got to prove how many readers you have and demonstrate both audience size as well as influence.” – above all else, if you are going to do this as a business – you’ve got to show that you can monetize this audience that you are working so hard to build and I think that was one of Mike’s points; “How much of that value does Robert receive? Zilch.”
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“Why does this all matter? Well, if you are going to do this as a business you’ve got to prove how many readers you have and demonstrate both audience size as well as influence.” – above all else, if you are going to do this as a business – you’ve got to show that you can monetize this audience that you are working so hard to build and I think that was one of Mike’s points; “How much of that value does Robert receive? Zilch.”
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Lots of good comments already so I’ll keep this short.
All things in moderation. I do consider your blog “brand central” and the rest chatter. Your blog is like giving a speech, the rest is bs around a water cooler, even though they can be useful. Your blog is your hub, don’t neglect it.
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Lots of good comments already so I’ll keep this short.
All things in moderation. I do consider your blog “brand central” and the rest chatter. Your blog is like giving a speech, the rest is bs around a water cooler, even though they can be useful. Your blog is your hub, don’t neglect it.
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Hmm, did not notice that I had removed you from my Google reader feeds until I saw this on Louis’s blog. I invested some time on twitter and some on facebook, and none on friendfeed.
I think I’ll prefer to see thoughtful pieces from you on your blog because you have to invest in yourself first. ‘Pay yourself first” – your blog then pay others.
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Hmm, did not notice that I had removed you from my Google reader feeds until I saw this on Louis’s blog. I invested some time on twitter and some on facebook, and none on friendfeed.
I think I’ll prefer to see thoughtful pieces from you on your blog because you have to invest in yourself first. ‘Pay yourself first” – your blog then pay others.
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oy, this comment i was going to post turned into a saga. read about over at my blog
( http://culturekitchen.com/liza/blog/to_robert_scoble_inre_friendfeed_and_twitter )
here’s the comment i was going to leave here initially :
i was going to leave this at Michael’s blog, but am going to leave it here, you know, to actually make the point am writing about 😀
i’ve always thought of FF and Twitter as features and not actual platforms. in my book they’re not even full services. they’re really nifty features waiting for a service. features that, by the way, suck the money community, activity and eventually money out of a blog.
so michael was absolutely right and am aghast at the number of hours he says you’ve spent. i don’t want to look at what my numbers may be.
it’s why after working on upgrade and re-designed plans for my blogs, i basically scrapped what i had and went back to the drawing board. i want my blogs to be the platform from which i twitter everything.
i mean, i’ve never understood why you need FriendFeed when people can have people comment on his blog. FF is just an aggregator Robert. a community aggregator. there’s nothing that they do that you can’t do, technically, if you ran your blog on Drupal instead of WordPress.
Drupal has several aggregating modules that can turn any site into an FF. why they never took off? as usual, the problem with Drupal developers is that they think of functionality before ease of use. FF is the “Leech” module in Drupal with a really nice UI for creating the profile page.
but let’s get back to basics : you like FF because “FF = Twitter + comments”. it’s the virtual water cooler chat we don’t get because we work from home. i like to describe more like a cocktail party as well.
Twitter rocks for me (and FF rocks for you) because i don’t have to be committed to a linear narrative the way have to with each blog post. so obviously the issue here is that we need a way to have comments on twitterings just like FriendFeed WHILE BRINGING THOSE CONVERSATIONS BACK TO OUR BLOGS –and that has to be done through the platform your twittering from. that platform for professional bloggers has to be … ahem … the blogs.
in my case what i’d like to have in the re-desing is the results i get with the current hookup i have for twittering : IM/Google Talk + Ping.FM.
if i can basically have my site function like a Ping.FM, then i’ll be able to have the kind of microblogging fun i’ve found in twitter. of course the issu here is the aggregation of the “twitterbacks”. if twitterings had permalinks that identified the orginating twittering from the replies, then we’d be in business. their sloppiness is there for a reason : they take away value from our blogs by denying easy aggregation.
anyhow, back to my technological solution.
in my case, even though there’s a Ping.FM module for Drupal 6, i have to run my sites for awhile in D5 until we’re able to finish importing static pages from a legacy site. so i either need to have someone back-port that module OR i’ll have to look into maybe using some email function to have the pinging happening in real time through my blog. any way it happens though, it has to happen through my blog, not just through my IM or Twitkit UI.
anyhow, am glad Michael brought this up because, indeed, no service is a good service to bloggers if it doesn’t bring back value to their blog. as it is right now, neither Twitter nor FriendFeed do that.
and am still amazed that none of these companies pay you for the value you bring them. i mean, i can understand not paying me because i can’t pull 23K followers even though a lot of these startups think of me as influential enough to pitch me all the friggin’ time. but you, my friend, bring something to these services that is worth you’re weight in gold. pull out of FF. take all your content out as an experiment. am sure they’d get massively hit w/o your presence.
but there’s also something more to think about Robert : you’re eagerness to do this work for free hurts us all professional bloggers out there. it hurts our economy because, if someone like Robert Scoble will do R&D or marketing for a company for free, why wouldn’t a shmuckette like Liza “blogdiva” Sabater?
as probably the most influential tech blogger individual out there, you need to ask people the hard question of, “how is this going to enhance my blog and make it more valuable”. this is the very question i asked back in 2007 about Twitter when we were in SXSW and it was the very same question that nobody was able to answer.
this is one case in which the “trickle down economics” make sense to me. if you establish that your influence has a price, the rest of us will be able to capitalize more effectively on our influence as well.
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oy, this comment i was going to post turned into a saga. read about over at my blog
( http://culturekitchen.com/liza/blog/to_robert_scoble_inre_friendfeed_and_twitter )
here’s the comment i was going to leave here initially :
i was going to leave this at Michael’s blog, but am going to leave it here, you know, to actually make the point am writing about 😀
i’ve always thought of FF and Twitter as features and not actual platforms. in my book they’re not even full services. they’re really nifty features waiting for a service. features that, by the way, suck the money community, activity and eventually money out of a blog.
so michael was absolutely right and am aghast at the number of hours he says you’ve spent. i don’t want to look at what my numbers may be.
it’s why after working on upgrade and re-designed plans for my blogs, i basically scrapped what i had and went back to the drawing board. i want my blogs to be the platform from which i twitter everything.
i mean, i’ve never understood why you need FriendFeed when people can have people comment on his blog. FF is just an aggregator Robert. a community aggregator. there’s nothing that they do that you can’t do, technically, if you ran your blog on Drupal instead of WordPress.
Drupal has several aggregating modules that can turn any site into an FF. why they never took off? as usual, the problem with Drupal developers is that they think of functionality before ease of use. FF is the “Leech” module in Drupal with a really nice UI for creating the profile page.
but let’s get back to basics : you like FF because “FF = Twitter + comments”. it’s the virtual water cooler chat we don’t get because we work from home. i like to describe more like a cocktail party as well.
Twitter rocks for me (and FF rocks for you) because i don’t have to be committed to a linear narrative the way have to with each blog post. so obviously the issue here is that we need a way to have comments on twitterings just like FriendFeed WHILE BRINGING THOSE CONVERSATIONS BACK TO OUR BLOGS –and that has to be done through the platform your twittering from. that platform for professional bloggers has to be … ahem … the blogs.
in my case what i’d like to have in the re-desing is the results i get with the current hookup i have for twittering : IM/Google Talk + Ping.FM.
if i can basically have my site function like a Ping.FM, then i’ll be able to have the kind of microblogging fun i’ve found in twitter. of course the issu here is the aggregation of the “twitterbacks”. if twitterings had permalinks that identified the orginating twittering from the replies, then we’d be in business. their sloppiness is there for a reason : they take away value from our blogs by denying easy aggregation.
anyhow, back to my technological solution.
in my case, even though there’s a Ping.FM module for Drupal 6, i have to run my sites for awhile in D5 until we’re able to finish importing static pages from a legacy site. so i either need to have someone back-port that module OR i’ll have to look into maybe using some email function to have the pinging happening in real time through my blog. any way it happens though, it has to happen through my blog, not just through my IM or Twitkit UI.
anyhow, am glad Michael brought this up because, indeed, no service is a good service to bloggers if it doesn’t bring back value to their blog. as it is right now, neither Twitter nor FriendFeed do that.
and am still amazed that none of these companies pay you for the value you bring them. i mean, i can understand not paying me because i can’t pull 23K followers even though a lot of these startups think of me as influential enough to pitch me all the friggin’ time. but you, my friend, bring something to these services that is worth you’re weight in gold. pull out of FF. take all your content out as an experiment. am sure they’d get massively hit w/o your presence.
but there’s also something more to think about Robert : you’re eagerness to do this work for free hurts us all professional bloggers out there. it hurts our economy because, if someone like Robert Scoble will do R&D or marketing for a company for free, why wouldn’t a shmuckette like Liza “blogdiva” Sabater?
as probably the most influential tech blogger individual out there, you need to ask people the hard question of, “how is this going to enhance my blog and make it more valuable”. this is the very question i asked back in 2007 about Twitter when we were in SXSW and it was the very same question that nobody was able to answer.
this is one case in which the “trickle down economics” make sense to me. if you establish that your influence has a price, the rest of us will be able to capitalize more effectively on our influence as well.
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Twiiter and FF are too ephemeral. What you write and think are there and gone in an instant. While you have tens of thousands of “friends” and “followers” only a fraction of them are tuned in to each comment at any one time. A blog post is like a rock in the stream of social media. You can refer back to it in future posts and in your fleeting Friend Feed and Facebook wall scribbles.
I would re-focus on blogging Robert.
-Stiennon
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Twiiter and FF are too ephemeral. What you write and think are there and gone in an instant. While you have tens of thousands of “friends” and “followers” only a fraction of them are tuned in to each comment at any one time. A blog post is like a rock in the stream of social media. You can refer back to it in future posts and in your fleeting Friend Feed and Facebook wall scribbles.
I would re-focus on blogging Robert.
-Stiennon
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I am not a big Friendfeed user, but I used Twitter a lot. I came to a realization of how it was affecting my life after I realize that I was super productive in not being productive.
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I am not a big Friendfeed user, but I used Twitter a lot. I came to a realization of how it was affecting my life after I realize that I was super productive in not being productive.
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Steinnon, that’s partially true. we writers do need to have that kind of ephemeral interactivity. just because you leave a comment on a site or have a MySpace page, that doesn’t make you a writer.
there’s a whole different skill set involved and set of intellectual muscles. and just like with any muscle they can get exhausted after years of use.
it’s not an either/or proposition this writing thing. what we need to change is the way we treat blogs. they need to evolve into being aggregating platforms as well as broadcasting platforms.
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Steinnon, that’s partially true. we writers do need to have that kind of ephemeral interactivity. just because you leave a comment on a site or have a MySpace page, that doesn’t make you a writer.
there’s a whole different skill set involved and set of intellectual muscles. and just like with any muscle they can get exhausted after years of use.
it’s not an either/or proposition this writing thing. what we need to change is the way we treat blogs. they need to evolve into being aggregating platforms as well as broadcasting platforms.
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In a word: “Scary.” In a phrase: “Get a life.”
Technology is grand. It’s great for education, entertainment, business and more. However, I sure am glad my family, nature, and other sources pull me off the grid — frequently.
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In a word: “Scary.” In a phrase: “Get a life.”
Technology is grand. It’s great for education, entertainment, business and more. However, I sure am glad my family, nature, and other sources pull me off the grid — frequently.
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maynas eric hits it over the head with his comment. i actually propose we stop talking about “microblogging” and start describing twitter and friendfeed as “social SMS”.
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maynas eric hits it over the head with his comment. i actually propose we stop talking about “microblogging” and start describing twitter and friendfeed as “social SMS”.
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Time to balance the push and pull between your feeds and blog posts to ensure that you keep your blog relevant (and generating revenue) and your information immediate (by following / being followed) through the feeds
All about balance
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Time to balance the push and pull between your feeds and blog posts to ensure that you keep your blog relevant (and generating revenue) and your information immediate (by following / being followed) through the feeds
All about balance
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Robert,
Sadly, I didn’t follow you once on friendfeed/twitter throughout 2008, but did keep coming to your blog. Every time I went to your friendfeed page, it was just too messy and disjointed to give me anything to really read – signal to noise problem IMHO.
Unlike your blog where the focus is the content, with comments to complement, ff is basically all comments with little content – and not that interesting to someone that isn’t so heavily plugged in as yourself and doesn’t spend as much time following.
I hope you keep blogging, because you’re an insightful guy with interesting things to say, too bad all that seems to be lost with what makes it to ff/twitter…. not your fault, just some of the limitations of microblogging.
Have a great holiday!
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Robert,
Sadly, I didn’t follow you once on friendfeed/twitter throughout 2008, but did keep coming to your blog. Every time I went to your friendfeed page, it was just too messy and disjointed to give me anything to really read – signal to noise problem IMHO.
Unlike your blog where the focus is the content, with comments to complement, ff is basically all comments with little content – and not that interesting to someone that isn’t so heavily plugged in as yourself and doesn’t spend as much time following.
I hope you keep blogging, because you’re an insightful guy with interesting things to say, too bad all that seems to be lost with what makes it to ff/twitter…. not your fault, just some of the limitations of microblogging.
Have a great holiday!
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Maybe you should take a few days during the Christmas/New Year’s break and refine you personal and professional mission statement. And then determine what strategy and tactics best support that mission.
Since you’ve been doing videos your blog pretty much serves as an advertising space where you say “Here, watch this video for this reason.”
I guess if 22K people actually follow you and pay attention to your feed, then there is a lot of value in that though.
So I guess the only thing else I would suggest is balance. Don’t let one media platform dominate your message and mission. Look at the Newspaper industry. If they would have embraced the Internet 10-15 years ago and developed an outstanding online presence to compliment their traditional print service, they would have been better off during the transition to the purely digital media platform that is becomming the norm.
On a side note and just my opinion, seven hours a day is a lot of time in front of the computer doing twits and ff. Don’t you have a personal life?
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Maybe you should take a few days during the Christmas/New Year’s break and refine you personal and professional mission statement. And then determine what strategy and tactics best support that mission.
Since you’ve been doing videos your blog pretty much serves as an advertising space where you say “Here, watch this video for this reason.”
I guess if 22K people actually follow you and pay attention to your feed, then there is a lot of value in that though.
So I guess the only thing else I would suggest is balance. Don’t let one media platform dominate your message and mission. Look at the Newspaper industry. If they would have embraced the Internet 10-15 years ago and developed an outstanding online presence to compliment their traditional print service, they would have been better off during the transition to the purely digital media platform that is becomming the norm.
On a side note and just my opinion, seven hours a day is a lot of time in front of the computer doing twits and ff. Don’t you have a personal life?
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I don’t see the problem with heavy use of Twitter/Friendfeed, because that means you don’t have to clutter up your influential blog with ephemerata. I love Todd Sieling’s concept of a ‘slowblog’.
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I don’t see the problem with heavy use of Twitter/Friendfeed, because that means you don’t have to clutter up your influential blog with ephemerata. I love Todd Sieling’s concept of a ‘slowblog’.
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Robert,
Are you in the news business? Or are you in the commentary business? I would think the latter. You write about trends and issues before others may see them, but that is part of the process of being in business/technology commentary.
I think your greatest advatage and best product, is not short little tweets, but the longer thought peices. The longer items are what demonstrates your knowledge, expertise, and forecasting. These traits are what give your opinion weight and make you valuable.
I agree with
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Robert,
Are you in the news business? Or are you in the commentary business? I would think the latter. You write about trends and issues before others may see them, but that is part of the process of being in business/technology commentary.
I think your greatest advatage and best product, is not short little tweets, but the longer thought peices. The longer items are what demonstrates your knowledge, expertise, and forecasting. These traits are what give your opinion weight and make you valuable.
I agree with
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With all of your Twitter, FF, cell phone video interviewing, and Fast Company TV, I didn’t even realize you blogged any more. I miss your old blogs.
To be honest, I think you have spread your personal brand too thin.
Though the Internet is filled with noise and a seemingly endless amount of info, in reality there is too little new, thoughtful content being created. Seth Godin does create a lot of original thoughtful content that spreads on its own. He does not need to try to become his marketing department by spending too much time on FF or Twitter.
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With all of your Twitter, FF, cell phone video interviewing, and Fast Company TV, I didn’t even realize you blogged any more. I miss your old blogs.
To be honest, I think you have spread your personal brand too thin.
Though the Internet is filled with noise and a seemingly endless amount of info, in reality there is too little new, thoughtful content being created. Seth Godin does create a lot of original thoughtful content that spreads on its own. He does not need to try to become his marketing department by spending too much time on FF or Twitter.
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You forgot to mention something else you gained from spending so much time on Twitter and FriendFeed Robert….
You were featured in this very funny video:
In all seriousness I think you are both right. Spend just a little less time on twitter and a little more time on your blog and your video blogging.
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You forgot to mention something else you gained from spending so much time on Twitter and FriendFeed Robert….
You were featured in this very funny video:
In all seriousness I think you are both right. Spend just a little less time on twitter and a little more time on your blog and your video blogging.
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You forgot to mention something else you gained from spending so much time on Twitter and FriendFeed Robert….
You were featured in this very funny video:
Well you made part two anyway =p
In all seriousness I think you are both right. Spend just a little less time on twitter and a little more time on your blog and your video blogging.
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You forgot to mention something else you gained from spending so much time on Twitter and FriendFeed Robert….
You were featured in this very funny video:
Well you made part two anyway =p
In all seriousness I think you are both right. Spend just a little less time on twitter and a little more time on your blog and your video blogging.
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Robert,
(First of all, you should use RescueTime to truly understand what percentage of your work life you invest where! <– Shameless plug!)
Twitter & Friendfeed are pretty much forums/chatrooms… They are great places for you to invest some time… 2-way conversation is good.
But I’d question what you’ve “gained”. I don’t think a lot of people there constitute a “new” audience for you. I don’t follow you on either service (sorry, it’s like drinking from a firehose!), but many/most of the things you write about that are relevant to me get to me somehow (retweeting, techmeme, what have you).
Further, I’d question the number of “followers”. First, most of those people aren’t reading what you say… Following does NOT equal consumption/engagement.
Pretend you’d invested ALL of that time in your blog and instead of losing 14% of your traffic, you gained. And pretend you did a bunch of A/B testing to get your RSS subscription up. And pretend you focused a bit on SEO. And pretend you created/emphasized an email subscription program and promoted it. How many more individuals would you have touched? My guess is way the hell more than the 20-30k represented on Twitter/FF (lots of overlap in the two userbases, I’d imagine).
Heck, how many unique visitors does the 14% by itself represent?
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Robert,
(First of all, you should use RescueTime to truly understand what percentage of your work life you invest where! <– Shameless plug!)
Twitter & Friendfeed are pretty much forums/chatrooms… They are great places for you to invest some time… 2-way conversation is good.
But I’d question what you’ve “gained”. I don’t think a lot of people there constitute a “new” audience for you. I don’t follow you on either service (sorry, it’s like drinking from a firehose!), but many/most of the things you write about that are relevant to me get to me somehow (retweeting, techmeme, what have you).
Further, I’d question the number of “followers”. First, most of those people aren’t reading what you say… Following does NOT equal consumption/engagement.
Pretend you’d invested ALL of that time in your blog and instead of losing 14% of your traffic, you gained. And pretend you did a bunch of A/B testing to get your RSS subscription up. And pretend you focused a bit on SEO. And pretend you created/emphasized an email subscription program and promoted it. How many more individuals would you have touched? My guess is way the hell more than the 20-30k represented on Twitter/FF (lots of overlap in the two userbases, I’d imagine).
Heck, how many unique visitors does the 14% by itself represent?
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Scoble – i read your twitter/FF posts all the time and find them extremely useful as i don’t have 15 – 20 minutes to read blog posts. Little snippets of advice/direction/updates/trends is getting me what i need.
Each tweet that i find useful reinforces my intuition to look to Scoblizer, Fast Company.tv, and other places on the web where I know i can find you.
In other words, it builds your “brand” and will pay off in the long run.
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Scoble – i read your twitter/FF posts all the time and find them extremely useful as i don’t have 15 – 20 minutes to read blog posts. Little snippets of advice/direction/updates/trends is getting me what i need.
Each tweet that i find useful reinforces my intuition to look to Scoblizer, Fast Company.tv, and other places on the web where I know i can find you.
In other words, it builds your “brand” and will pay off in the long run.
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Robert, I wanted to thank you for linking that friendfeed discussion on saving journalism! I was curious where you’ve been, and have been ignoring friendfeed for no real reason. I now see how useful it is.
It does not look like you have been wasting any time, rather participating (dare I say leading) in this growing new world of communication. Keep up whatever you’re doing.
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Robert, I wanted to thank you for linking that friendfeed discussion on saving journalism! I was curious where you’ve been, and have been ignoring friendfeed for no real reason. I now see how useful it is.
It does not look like you have been wasting any time, rather participating (dare I say leading) in this growing new world of communication. Keep up whatever you’re doing.
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I actually miss your blog. I’m not into the whole twitter/friendfeed thing.
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I actually miss your blog. I’m not into the whole twitter/friendfeed thing.
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Quantity does not equal quality.
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Quantity does not equal quality.
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Robert – I left a similar comment on TechCrunch also. I unfollowed you on Twitter a couple months back because I found myself constantly scrolling through your tweets. As someone who is focused on working and family life, there is no way I can parse your endless stream of Twitters into something coherent. A lot of it is @ replies, as if Twitter is your replacement for IM. Maybe this is where you see the value.
You should also factor the “quality” of your followers into your analysis. You may have 22K followers, but my guess is that a vast majority of those people followed you and Guy Kawasaki, etc., because someone told them to follow you when they joined Twitter. It’s common wisdom (why, I have no idea) to start on Twitter by following the high volume tweeters.
Pete
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Robert – I left a similar comment on TechCrunch also. I unfollowed you on Twitter a couple months back because I found myself constantly scrolling through your tweets. As someone who is focused on working and family life, there is no way I can parse your endless stream of Twitters into something coherent. A lot of it is @ replies, as if Twitter is your replacement for IM. Maybe this is where you see the value.
You should also factor the “quality” of your followers into your analysis. You may have 22K followers, but my guess is that a vast majority of those people followed you and Guy Kawasaki, etc., because someone told them to follow you when they joined Twitter. It’s common wisdom (why, I have no idea) to start on Twitter by following the high volume tweeters.
Pete
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Robert,
Part of the issue is that we are becoming more of an ADHD society on a daily basis. I agree with the others that have stated you should try to balance both your blog and Twitter/FriendFeed. At the end of the day, you should consider a blog post summary (to share with those who don’t hang on your up-to-the-nanosecond updates). Not a regurgitation, but what you learned or achieved throughout the day, and what you can use out of it for tomorrow and beyond.
I think THAT is what people are looking for.
Jamie
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Robert,
Part of the issue is that we are becoming more of an ADHD society on a daily basis. I agree with the others that have stated you should try to balance both your blog and Twitter/FriendFeed. At the end of the day, you should consider a blog post summary (to share with those who don’t hang on your up-to-the-nanosecond updates). Not a regurgitation, but what you learned or achieved throughout the day, and what you can use out of it for tomorrow and beyond.
I think THAT is what people are looking for.
Jamie
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Robert, continue to be true to yourself no matter the rants of the crowd. You have built a following for a variety of reasons including your tireless dedication and hard work. Let me suggest the obvious: a great many have come to enjoy this multichannel “living out loud” that you do so very well. Keep on keeping it real and doing so in ways that you find rewarding. Please accept my sincere best wishes for continued success in 2009.
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Robert, continue to be true to yourself no matter the rants of the crowd. You have built a following for a variety of reasons including your tireless dedication and hard work. Let me suggest the obvious: a great many have come to enjoy this multichannel “living out loud” that you do so very well. Keep on keeping it real and doing so in ways that you find rewarding. Please accept my sincere best wishes for continued success in 2009.
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Your blog traffic isn’t down as much as mine, but then I haven’t blogged at all for 6 months (that doesn’t mean it is time to unsubscribe though)
Friendfeed isn’t Quantified, but Scobleizer and Fastcompany.tv are.
Seems to me there is a huge correlation between Robert Scoble driving traffic from his BLOG to Friendfeed, and their traffic as estimated by Quantcast.
http://www.quantcast.com/profile/traffic-compare?domain0=scobleizer.com&domain1=andybeard.eu&domain2=fastcompany.tv&domain3=friendfeed.com&domain4=
Friendfeed really need to get Quantified.
At Friendfeed, my feeling is you are a big fish, ok a whale… in a very small pond. Sure you can help grow that pond and influence it, but it is very hard to grow it from within.
I tried that when in the games industry, growing first a CD publisher then a dev studio in Poland. It was a constant uphill battle.
Alternatively you are in the fortunate position to be able to grow from the outside. You can still be a part of the community. Send your likes at the same time as your old shared feed (no one mentioned the influence you played growing Google Reader)
You are such a huge participant in FF, but for some reason you don’t have the FF comment widget here on the blog, there are a number of alternatives.
Just by participating with FF in that reduced capacity, but from here on the blog, you will have a lot more chance to grow it from without.
How much additional time you spend on FF/Twitter really depends on how you want to manage your time, but there are many aggregation methods that can be used to pre-filter.
Fastcompany.tv will benefit from Scobleizer being front row rather than FF – it doesn’t matter how good the content is without people seeing it.
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Your blog traffic isn’t down as much as mine, but then I haven’t blogged at all for 6 months (that doesn’t mean it is time to unsubscribe though)
Friendfeed isn’t Quantified, but Scobleizer and Fastcompany.tv are.
Seems to me there is a huge correlation between Robert Scoble driving traffic from his BLOG to Friendfeed, and their traffic as estimated by Quantcast.
http://www.quantcast.com/profile/traffic-compare?domain0=scobleizer.com&domain1=andybeard.eu&domain2=fastcompany.tv&domain3=friendfeed.com&domain4=
Friendfeed really need to get Quantified.
At Friendfeed, my feeling is you are a big fish, ok a whale… in a very small pond. Sure you can help grow that pond and influence it, but it is very hard to grow it from within.
I tried that when in the games industry, growing first a CD publisher then a dev studio in Poland. It was a constant uphill battle.
Alternatively you are in the fortunate position to be able to grow from the outside. You can still be a part of the community. Send your likes at the same time as your old shared feed (no one mentioned the influence you played growing Google Reader)
You are such a huge participant in FF, but for some reason you don’t have the FF comment widget here on the blog, there are a number of alternatives.
Just by participating with FF in that reduced capacity, but from here on the blog, you will have a lot more chance to grow it from without.
How much additional time you spend on FF/Twitter really depends on how you want to manage your time, but there are many aggregation methods that can be used to pre-filter.
Fastcompany.tv will benefit from Scobleizer being front row rather than FF – it doesn’t matter how good the content is without people seeing it.
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I invited a bunch of people to Friendfeed yesterday from Twitter and got a lot of pushback. Most people who don’t do this for a living can only concentrate on one service. Keep blogging.
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I invited a bunch of people to Friendfeed yesterday from Twitter and got a lot of pushback. Most people who don’t do this for a living can only concentrate on one service. Keep blogging.
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Twitter is getting cluttered with newsfeeds and other crap, and will soon be taken over by the corporations and the marketers. Yuck.
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Twitter is getting cluttered with newsfeeds and other crap, and will soon be taken over by the corporations and the marketers. Yuck.
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hi
it is not an insult but …. you are just crazy. in a _bad_way. you could just write short (140ch) posts on the wordpress as well. you could just have different layout per post or category.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/art-direction/
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hi
it is not an insult but …. you are just crazy. in a _bad_way. you could just write short (140ch) posts on the wordpress as well. you could just have different layout per post or category.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/art-direction/
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I think it’s a good thing, keep the sociopaths offa the blogs, isolate them on virtual islands, where they can tweet and yap all day, not messing up Google and other engines with inane fluff.
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I think it’s a good thing, keep the sociopaths offa the blogs, isolate them on virtual islands, where they can tweet and yap all day, not messing up Google and other engines with inane fluff.
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pls write mmore blogposts. :)ok? twitter and friendfeed klutter and your posts let me enjoy some thoughts. am I over 140 characters yet?
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pls write mmore blogposts. :)ok? twitter and friendfeed klutter and your posts let me enjoy some thoughts. am I over 140 characters yet?
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truth be told, I always attributed your decreasing blogging to your video-work, back during the (was it pre?)fastcompany-days. It’s so much harder to index that kind of stuff through Techmeme et al and feels pretty incompatible with this whole blogging thing anyway (whereas you can skim text, you can’t really skim video).
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truth be told, I always attributed your decreasing blogging to your video-work, back during the (was it pre?)fastcompany-days. It’s so much harder to index that kind of stuff through Techmeme et al and feels pretty incompatible with this whole blogging thing anyway (whereas you can skim text, you can’t really skim video).
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come back to blogging. i am the non-tech type that your adverts desire. i actually removed you from rss feed for a while b/c there was nothing here. i wont go chasing the conv in ff & twitter or wherever. i just dont have the time b/c i have other stuff to do.
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come back to blogging. i am the non-tech type that your adverts desire. i actually removed you from rss feed for a while b/c there was nothing here. i wont go chasing the conv in ff & twitter or wherever. i just dont have the time b/c i have other stuff to do.
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And I thought it was complicated to just be bloggin on myspace. Yep, Im still new at blogging.
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And I thought it was complicated to just be bloggin on myspace. Yep, Im still new at blogging.
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To rev an old saw, “size [and numbers of followers] is not everything”- more a question of the (?) qualitative value of this activity to others and yourself. Multiple answers.
I’d consider also what is the longer record you will have of what you did- if you have 8 years of blog posts, you have a searchable, linkable archive. Old tweets fall off the edge…
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To rev an old saw, “size [and numbers of followers] is not everything”- more a question of the (?) qualitative value of this activity to others and yourself. Multiple answers.
I’d consider also what is the longer record you will have of what you did- if you have 8 years of blog posts, you have a searchable, linkable archive. Old tweets fall off the edge…
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Robert,
“A leader goes first.”
Only you know whether or not what you’re doing is right, and even then, you can be wrong. But that’s not what makes a leader useful. What makes a leader useful is optimism—your belief in the potential you envision.
Your belief in the potential you see allows great things to happen and rallies people to a different future. Whether it’s a “better” future is hard to say, but leaders are there to inspire people to make change, and “better” usually comes with change.
I’m wired for leadership, too, and I can see great potential in the direction you seem to be heading in. I see the possibility that you see, but perhaps others do not.
If you believe in what you’re doing and you know it is right, keep going. Be prepared to fall flat on your face. That’s the price you pay for forging a new trail. Sometimes you’ll find a new land, filled with treasure. Sometimes you’ll wonder off a (not-very-steep) cliff and end up battered and bruised.
That’s the price a leader pays, and he pays it willingly, because he can clearly see that, if what he envisions _does_ happen, the world will be better in some way.
Nothing you do here can be detrimental in the long-term. If you fall off a cliff, you will learn from it and it will be educational. If you find treasure, then what you originally saw will be validated and you will be called a visionary.
When both paths lead to a win, the only question left is “what do I want to experience right now?”
Then go do it, and if needed, find a way to make it work.
— Bruce
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Robert,
“A leader goes first.”
Only you know whether or not what you’re doing is right, and even then, you can be wrong. But that’s not what makes a leader useful. What makes a leader useful is optimism—your belief in the potential you envision.
Your belief in the potential you see allows great things to happen and rallies people to a different future. Whether it’s a “better” future is hard to say, but leaders are there to inspire people to make change, and “better” usually comes with change.
I’m wired for leadership, too, and I can see great potential in the direction you seem to be heading in. I see the possibility that you see, but perhaps others do not.
If you believe in what you’re doing and you know it is right, keep going. Be prepared to fall flat on your face. That’s the price you pay for forging a new trail. Sometimes you’ll find a new land, filled with treasure. Sometimes you’ll wonder off a (not-very-steep) cliff and end up battered and bruised.
That’s the price a leader pays, and he pays it willingly, because he can clearly see that, if what he envisions _does_ happen, the world will be better in some way.
Nothing you do here can be detrimental in the long-term. If you fall off a cliff, you will learn from it and it will be educational. If you find treasure, then what you originally saw will be validated and you will be called a visionary.
When both paths lead to a win, the only question left is “what do I want to experience right now?”
Then go do it, and if needed, find a way to make it work.
— Bruce
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Why blog OR friendfeed? And would be good. I’m sure your blog should be your primary service, with friendfeed and twitter supporting it.
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Why blog OR friendfeed? And would be good. I’m sure your blog should be your primary service, with friendfeed and twitter supporting it.
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Robert, you always know how to create a headline. In my very humble opinion, you have done very well in both endeavors. You go where the meat is, so to speak. I would suppose there is some concern over negatively impacting your revenue stream, but if you can quantify an extended reach, as Louis suggested, the perhaps there is a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow!
I think you are demonstrating that there are many sides to the proverbial coin. Neither is right or wrong, and you have quite accurately captured solid points and their counter-points.
I will say from the perspective of a social media novice, Twitter and FriendFeed have made you more accessible to “Joe Sixpack” 😉 Thanks for that at least.
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Robert, you always know how to create a headline. In my very humble opinion, you have done very well in both endeavors. You go where the meat is, so to speak. I would suppose there is some concern over negatively impacting your revenue stream, but if you can quantify an extended reach, as Louis suggested, the perhaps there is a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow!
I think you are demonstrating that there are many sides to the proverbial coin. Neither is right or wrong, and you have quite accurately captured solid points and their counter-points.
I will say from the perspective of a social media novice, Twitter and FriendFeed have made you more accessible to “Joe Sixpack” 😉 Thanks for that at least.
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There is a lot to be said for temporarily focusing on FriendFeed and Twitter to build a following of readers, then returning to longer blog posts knowing that those readers will be sharing your ideas on your behalf. It could even be said that would be a very wise strategy – in hindsight or foresight!
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There is a lot to be said for temporarily focusing on FriendFeed and Twitter to build a following of readers, then returning to longer blog posts knowing that those readers will be sharing your ideas on your behalf. It could even be said that would be a very wise strategy – in hindsight or foresight!
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Robert,
I am curious and like learning things. I have been aware of your existence since you worked in Microsoft, and probably read a few dozen blog posts over the years. All memorable, but so what…
In 2008, I ended up following you, because @scobleizer kept invading my twitter stream (same goes for @guykawasaki), and I was missing half the conversation…so I followed, and this is what I learn (apart from the tech stuff):
* You want to get smarter
* You will talk to anyone to get smarter
* You kid likes building lego (qik)
* You like peaceful pictures
* You like meeting people before/during/after taking peaceful pictures
* You like to change you mind (anyone around for a drink/oops changed my mind)
* You take the safest option, based on public opinion
* You like to do it in a way that creates (mild) controversy.
So, I guess, yes, twitter and ff has allowed to get me to know the man behind the name, and I also subscribed to your blog, but I don’t read your blog any more.
So what are you going to do for 2009? I expect that you will listen to the comments here, pull back for a few months, experience withdrawal symptoms, find a new toy to play with, and reinvent yourself again for 2009. If I were you, I would capitalize on the money/advertising/endorsement, cash in and get out. You’re not getting any younger.
Oh, and you have encouraged me to be more forthright, honest and outspoken on my blog too.
All the best, Scobleizer..
Navdeep.
P.S. Then next time you are in the UK, I will give you a call.
P.P.S. Love your Twitter Idiot Land post
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Robert,
I am curious and like learning things. I have been aware of your existence since you worked in Microsoft, and probably read a few dozen blog posts over the years. All memorable, but so what…
In 2008, I ended up following you, because @scobleizer kept invading my twitter stream (same goes for @guykawasaki), and I was missing half the conversation…so I followed, and this is what I learn (apart from the tech stuff):
* You want to get smarter
* You will talk to anyone to get smarter
* You kid likes building lego (qik)
* You like peaceful pictures
* You like meeting people before/during/after taking peaceful pictures
* You like to change you mind (anyone around for a drink/oops changed my mind)
* You take the safest option, based on public opinion
* You like to do it in a way that creates (mild) controversy.
So, I guess, yes, twitter and ff has allowed to get me to know the man behind the name, and I also subscribed to your blog, but I don’t read your blog any more.
So what are you going to do for 2009? I expect that you will listen to the comments here, pull back for a few months, experience withdrawal symptoms, find a new toy to play with, and reinvent yourself again for 2009. If I were you, I would capitalize on the money/advertising/endorsement, cash in and get out. You’re not getting any younger.
Oh, and you have encouraged me to be more forthright, honest and outspoken on my blog too.
All the best, Scobleizer..
Navdeep.
P.S. Then next time you are in the UK, I will give you a call.
P.P.S. Love your Twitter Idiot Land post
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I’m relatively new to Twitter, surrounded by a few hundred people, and even at such a low number, I’m struggling with the transient nature of the information stream.
I can’t spend all day looking at the Twitter-ticker, and if I don’t, I miss things that I may care about. It seems that the more people I follow, the less value I’m able to get from Twitter (more noise), but the more people follow me, the greater my perceived social IQ. Am I the only one feeling this way?
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I’m relatively new to Twitter, surrounded by a few hundred people, and even at such a low number, I’m struggling with the transient nature of the information stream.
I can’t spend all day looking at the Twitter-ticker, and if I don’t, I miss things that I may care about. It seems that the more people I follow, the less value I’m able to get from Twitter (more noise), but the more people follow me, the greater my perceived social IQ. Am I the only one feeling this way?
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Great post, Robert! I think the social medium you are embracing is the future. Blogs will always have their place but the movement of real-time “tracking” of people’s actions is clearly becoming a necessity especially in the tech industry. While there’s always a balance to be found (you’re right, you don’t post as much which is unfortunate) the immediacy of information (for those of us able to track it throughout the day) is powerful to say the least. Numbers don’t lie. No intervention necessary IMO.
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Great post, Robert! I think the social medium you are embracing is the future. Blogs will always have their place but the movement of real-time “tracking” of people’s actions is clearly becoming a necessity especially in the tech industry. While there’s always a balance to be found (you’re right, you don’t post as much which is unfortunate) the immediacy of information (for those of us able to track it throughout the day) is powerful to say the least. Numbers don’t lie. No intervention necessary IMO.
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Blogs fing rock. Slam period.
140 char info- yawn. Streams of meaningless verbal hash- entertaining. I dig it. K?
But something about life requires a resounding richness tool for dispensation. Blogs do this. Blogs do this like nothing else.
All the big name mind spewage are as elusive digital farts when condensed onto a Twitter stream which is why they have to fing work so hard.
Twitter the easy crap. Blog us the grails.
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Blogs fing rock. Slam period.
140 char info- yawn. Streams of meaningless verbal hash- entertaining. I dig it. K?
But something about life requires a resounding richness tool for dispensation. Blogs do this. Blogs do this like nothing else.
All the big name mind spewage are as elusive digital farts when condensed onto a Twitter stream which is why they have to fing work so hard.
Twitter the easy crap. Blog us the grails.
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I tried to spend atleast 4 hours a day on twitter for 7 days and the ROI is too bad. People tend to not click on links provided by others on twitter. The description is too short for the link to be click. And you can’t overcommunicate with others through @replies because it can annoy others.
But guys, you can follow me on twitter.
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I tried to spend atleast 4 hours a day on twitter for 7 days and the ROI is too bad. People tend to not click on links provided by others on twitter. The description is too short for the link to be click. And you can’t overcommunicate with others through @replies because it can annoy others.
But guys, you can follow me on twitter.
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nice.Thanks,Trabajo
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nice.Thanks,Trabajo
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