Well, hello WordPress 3.6

Uncategorized 2 Minutes

February? That’s the last time I posted here? Wild. I guess I fell into Facebook and Google+ and just haven’t been back. My numbers in both places continue to climb very quickly. Four million followers on Google+. 550,000 on Facebook. I’m the number one most followed on Flipboard. Same on Quora. So, I don’t think I made a bad choice. That said, I’ve cleaned up my WordPress blog. Went back to basics. I’ll be back soon to start talking about the book I’ve been writing with Shel Israel, titled the “Age of Context.” It’s going very well, just about finished with the content. Already have sold a few thousand copies, which is great since it won’t be out until late October. This weekend I’m off to see Australia’s startups for the first time. Anyway, thought I’d get a quick post up to see if the new WordPress 3.6 works and see if anyone is still watching this via RSS. If you are, please say hi.

UPDATE: I just wrote this over on Facebook about ye olde WordPress blog:

WordPress 3.6? Yeah. I haven’t blogged since February. I just posted and realized why I haven’t: blogging just seems so cold and lonely compared to Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. I don’t think it matters to the millions of people who want to blog but it does to me. It’s the longest time in 12 years that I haven’t blogged.

I wonder if anyone still uses RSS to watch my blog’s feed?

I turned off all my non-essential plugins, deleted all the spam comments that were waiting for me, and turned on the latest WordPress theme that came out with the new WordPress 3.6.

Even with all the new cool features it still feels like work to blog when compared to typing out a quick post on Facebook. Blogging feels like it should only be for “important” stuff now, not quick little posts that I don’t really care if anyone reads.

Writer block. First world problems. All that.

At one point a few years back I figured I’d never be able to stop blogging. Turned out my life didn’t end. Heck, I’ve gotten invited to better conferences, have more email than ever, and my videos are getting viewed more often, etc.

Now I’m faced with: what’s my old blog for?

Published by Robert Scoble

I help entrepreneurs build their technology business' story, help with getting ready for investors, with other launch plans, and many other strategic things that can help your new startup. Call to talk: +1-425-205-1921 (text first).

Published

64 thoughts on “Well, hello WordPress 3.6”

  3. I still love the blog over Google+ and FB. It’s a destination you actually have to go to rather than it being in your face all the time. I appreciate thought leaders sharing more on their personal blogs that all the time of social networks. Good stuff, man!

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  4. Your ideas about context are well considered, but don’t you think context in blogging has its own merits?

    Condescending to your own blog via this post while simultaneously paying it a backhanded compliment on the other networks (and adding insult to injury by quoting yourself) seems like a very out-of-context thing to do.

    Show your blog some love why don’t you. : ) Being the king of all social media is cool and all, but being the king of all bloggers, while harder to qualify, would be far more impressive.

    For a guy like you, planting stakes in an outpost and corralling its communities is like shooting fish in a barrel. Where’s the challenge in that.

    Come back to the frontier and show everyone what you’re really made of (I double dog dare ya).

    In the words of fitness guru and infomercial king, Tony Little, “You can do it!!”

    : )

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    1. Being the king of either blogging or social media doesn’t matter. Being the context king, now that would get me a raise! 🙂

      Seriously, the frontier of communication isn’t the blog. I think it would be something like Vine or Instagram video. I don’t have time to play around with short videos, though. Sort of like Mark Twain didn’t have time to write short stuff, either. 🙂

      It all works out for some reason. People know where to find me.

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      1. Robert, you’ve said it yourself: You’re an outlier. Whether you want to call it blogging or just self-publishing, it doesn’t matter. But self-hosted sites (not any form of social media) can and SHOULD be the frontier of communication forever because the average Joe is never going to have the options that you do on those channels.

        Diversifying your online portfolio is important. Ask Bohemea how that whole “frontier of communication” thing worked out for her. People need to understand that on the Internet, there’s stuff you own and stuff you borrow. Your purpose in life is to life on that edge and report back to the rest of us mortals, which is all good.

        But you should probably include a warning label like they have to do on those infomercials: Robert’s results are not typical and yours will probably suck in comparison.

        Oh, and I came from RSS. Had to kick you off my Facebook wall and I hate G+.

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  5. It is more solitary but it is the only place I own. No TOS no mergers no shutdowns. My domain, my words… feels weightier and not so quickly lost to the social ether. Good to see you blog Robert.

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    1. Hmm. It’s interesting that no one copped to coming here via RSS yet. So, that means that you all came here from Facebook, Twitter, or Google+. So, I don’t get why the social ether would be “lost.” If anything I probably lost a lot of people who just don’t care to click over and read me here.

      My blog, at one point, was in the top 20 of RSS feeds.

      As for TOS or mergers or shutdowns, doesn’t affect me because I am on three or four social nets. So, if one tried to pull some monkey business I’d just route around and cause a PR mess for that one.

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      2. I don’t know. But I haven’t posted for a long time, so that might be the problem. I also deleted a bunch of plugins. Do I need a specific one to kick out a feed? Hmmm.

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      3. I came here to comment precisely because I am using RSS feed and had otherwise forgotten about your content since I rarely go on G+, only use Facebook for friends & family, and I think I rarely see you in the sheer volume of Twitter which I follow due to time differences.

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      4. Well, that’s one person. Personally you should really get over using Facebook only for friends and family. It’s a great platform for doing that AND other stuff (and you can do that, with lists).

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      5. Obviously our personal tastes differ there then. I like to keep my friends and family stuff in Facebook and not aggregate everything into a single stream. I only check in there once or twice a week and get all I need, whilst I use RSS to see news in categorised streams.

        I’m aware of lists, there are 4 or 5 key lists I used to keep track of what I want to on Twitter for instance, and all the other options. It just boils down to the fact I find it more enjoyable to not put them all into one bucket (be that Facebook or other network of choice). Some people I like to follow are only in one network whilst others are not, making them mutually exclusive. Having dozens of lists doesn’t work for me either, I like to clump content by frequency that I check in & that it is updated.

        Also I find that my approach and personality conveyed in different places online has a different slant. Not utterly different yet significant enough when putting together the audience, content and my opinion.

        Like I say, personal taste.

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  6. Agree with Alex now era is coming of blogging & video expression. and thanks to Robert Scoble about such a wonderful information. I’m looking forward to see your latest work.

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  8. You bring up a good point Robert. Whats the role of your Blog with all these other platforms? It would be nice if my Squarespace based blog could intelligently figure out contextally driven ways to put together what I’m doing on Twitter & G+.

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  10. Hi Robert, Yes, Istill subscribe to your RSS feed. RSS is still the way I follow people who post sporadically. And yes, I see others using their blogs for longer, thoughtful content. So much better than Facebook.

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  11. I use blogging only because I can control the content as well as who sees it. When someone sees or shares the post on facebook or G+ they won’t really care who is the author (maybe not in your case, famous and all that). So these channels act as an alternative to RSS feed telling the users, hey take your pick where do you want to see the updates from but all roads lead back to the blog.

    Btw. Came over from your rss feed, feed.ly was telling me you have not written in a long time suprised to see your blog on top.

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  12. I still follow RSS for many things. Your blog, Techcrunch, Gigaom and many more for one main reason. My work considers the websites to be Social Networking and hence block them with Websense. However theirs (and yours) RSS feeds are not blocked for some reason so it’s the only way I can keep upto date with the Tech World at large.

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  14. I’m here via RSS. When you don’t show up in my feed, I miss you.

    “Treat different people differently!”

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    1. This… what Seth said.

      This is the first thing I’ve read, that you’ve wrote, since… February 😉

      Except for that “shower” stuff… but that wasn’t because you posted it… it was because someone else linked to it.

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  15. From a Rackspace Marketing point of view I would think you would still want to promote Blogs and CMS. How much of your content on FB and G+ is hosted on Rackspace servers? None? If I am a starting a new online business the core of my web presence will be hosted at a company like Rackspace, not Facebook or G+. Use the product you sell. Please stay with the Blog and use it as you primary means to communicate with your market.

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  16. You’ve always been in my RSS feed, and now that I’m working with you, I’m particularly glad about that. That said, the way I found this post was via Facebook, because I haven’t been into Feedly yet today. Either way – hi and safe travels to Oz!

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  21. The biggest mistake you can make (and Mike Elgan is making it too) is to cede control of your content and voice to a closed ecosystem. I use Facebook, Google+, and Twitter, but I do not put my original content there exclusively. I want to own my content, thanks.

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  22. Hi, Robert. Met you a couple of times in Seattle during Gnomedex a few years ago and also got to talk to you for a little bit during the photowalk we took with Chase Jarvis around over to the old abandoned ironworks.

    Anyway, I still subscribe to your blog via RSS. Please keep blogging.

    Cheers,

    Alberto S. Lopez
    El Segundo, CA

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  23. I tuned in to see if you were going to post on the Moto X. Not sure if you agree with John Battelle and Fred Wilson, but they don’t like giving their traffic to others and I agree. Hope you kickstart Scobleizer again. You were missed there.

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  24. Well, I came here from RSS.

    The thing I don’t get about everyone pooh-poohing RSS and feed readers in favor of Twitter or Facebook or Google+ is where do the people who you get those links from get them? Is it elephants all the way down or is it *gasp* RSS?

    Maybe I just use social media differently. I use Facebook for friends and family, Google+ to follow game designers and Twitter occasionally, but I live in my RSS reader. I don’t like going to sites unless I have to. I don’t have to remember to go to a site I went to a year ago,

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  27. Gosh, do you even not talk about yourself? I am doing some research on WordPress backups any yes, this was first in Google search – so can we just all acknowledge that you are awesome and talk about something else.

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  29. Landed here via RSS…

    what’s my old blog for?

    I’d start by using it for meaningful articles or media that you want to be around after the currently-popular social network is no longer en vogue.

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  30. I have 400+ feeds in Newsblur and also use social media extensively. I don’t see this as either-or.

    As mentioned, the blog belongs to us, and that’s a huge point in its favor. But most of the conversations I have about something I post on my blog now happen on Facebook, Twitter, and G+

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  31. RSS and I prefer it for following. No suggested or “hot” posts that I don’t care about, no 3rd party filtering based on my habits and I can take off for the week-end without having to dig to find posts I want to catch up on.

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  34. RSS reader checking in.
    I used to follow you on Facebook but you just post way too much for me ; I tried to put you within a list, but the problem remained. That’s what bugs me with those social networks: every piece of content is put on the same level, whereas on blogs people tend to select more carefully what they say, because they know it won’t get so easily burried in a crowded timeline.
    As for you videos and other things, I just don’t see watch them anymore since you don’t post them here.

    tl;dr: social networks are cool but they turn you into an attention whore.

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  35. Another RSS follower checking in. I’ve learned from reading your blog and shared that content with others. That hasn’t been the case with your updates on other platforms and I personally stopped following. Each platform has its advantages / disadvantages both for the content creator and for the consumer. If a WP blog no longer helps you communicate your message and achieve your goals, stop using it.

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  36. Another RSS follower who was hoping you weren’t dead. Too much information on social media to follow. I put my favorites into RSS Bandit.

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  37. RSS is a decentral solution, so you don’t have to rely on the big companies like twitter an facebook. But if your target is the number of followers etc., you made the right decision, I guess. I personally don’t believe that you can express good thoughts and opinions in just 140 characters. For me, making everything shorter, spending less time, shows also that we are driven to speed, to produce more in shorter time. So, keep on blogging, please, with an open medium!

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  40. Just updated to 3.6. I’m loving new features and improvements done into 3.6. Specially twenty thirteen theme simply an awesome staff and obviously HTML5 media player a terrific stuff as well …

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  41. RSS brought me here – don’t read you on Facebook or any of the other networks – i follow and read RSS to focus – AWAY from the cluttered space of social media – i would also say if you value what you write and your history – why let some random third party host it for you – who knows what will happen to YOUR work – oh and have you ever tried to find something in FB from even last week – close to impossible – not so in WordPress – where you have the power to index tag reference and categorize according to your needs.

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  42. Another RSS Feed reader checking in.

    I can’t access Twitter, Facebook, or G+ at work so blogs and RSS feeds are where I get my updates. I like to think of my RSS feed as being my own customized newspaper. I expect more depth from a blog post than random stream of thought post that come from twitter, facebook, and G+.

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  43. What’s half a million followers if they don’t actually pay attention?

    RSS isn’t sexy, but I’d wager a Newton 2100 and a shrink wrapped HyperCard that a higher percentage of RSS readers actually READ your posts from top to bottom versus those other channels.

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  44. Welcome back to blogging Robert. I missed your enthusiasm for the technology. Solo developers like me need your viewpoint. I don’t want to be on Twitter and Facebook.

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  45. Pingback: What's New in WordPress 3.6 - Video - How To WordPress 2.0

  48. In my very humble opinion, there is absolutely nothing like blogging. It is there to stay. Unlike G+ or facebook’s posts that are flickering and passing by only for the eyes of those living in the interface all day long…

    I, too, am absolutely guilty of neglect when it comes to blogging. But I still hold to my opinion strongly 🙂

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  49. Glad your back here! Don’t want to be arrogant, but I don’t want to hop to every other network a blogger chooses to go. So I missed you for a while. Understanding that a writer wants to choose the platform which connects to the biggest audience, but for me … I’m a RSS guy. (Or was a google Reader guy 😉

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