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In our on going series, As the Blogosphere Turns, we now turn to the heavyweight division as Robert Scoble and Jason Calacanis face off. In this corner we have Robert Scoble, huge blogger, very well respected and for the last couple of days he seems to of lost his fricken mind. He started this weekend by posting a story accusing other large blogs like Engadget of not linking to him which I already commented on. He followed that up today by with a story blasting Technorati for not being fast enough indexing a story of his. If that was not enough, please check out the comments as he raised his soap box to a new level and pretty much took the attitude that if you are not a king blogger like himself, you have absolutely no credibility.
While Scoble was going through what looked like a full mental breakdown, Jason Calacanis posted an open letter to Scoble stating:
“At this point you’re basically slandering them and spreading lies. You’re acting like a spoiled jerk and as your friend I feel the need to tell you that.”
Scoble finally responded by giving himself a much needed time out.
So why is there so much more bickering and juvenile in-fighting going on in the blogosphere lately? I think it boils down to a couple of main factors. First off, I think some people are forgetting that we all are here, A Class bloggers on down, for the same reason. We want to educate, share and most importantly, continually grow this community. I think it is important to remember what an incredibly amazing time we are living in. For the first time in the history of the world, technology has given anyone who wants their voice to be heard an opportunity to do so. This should be not be taken lightly or for granted.
I think the second reason is in some of these cases, a select few of these bloggers are starting to believe their own hype. They forgot the reason they started doing this in the first place and now are driven by greed and ego. Though as my grandfather use to say, “Karma’s a bitch”.
What do you think?
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Technorati Tags: Robert Scoble, Jason Calacanis, Engadget, Technorati
I don’t read Scobles blog but based on the fact that this isn’t the first meltdown and probably not his last, I doubt I ever will become a reader. I’ve never heard of someone so narcisistic. No matter how honest he is in his declaration that he wasn’t his best professionally, the damage is done and he’s got a long hole to climb out of. I just don’t have that kind of time.
Dave,
I hear ya… Even though there have been a number of things that I have never agreed with Scoble about, I have several times in my career said or wrote things when I was angry that I regretted later. I try to take the attitude that we are all human and make mistakes. It will be up to him on whether he learns from his mistakes or just continues in a vicious cycle.
Hey Cord,
First, thanks for the link.
Second, thanks for the great articles.
I’m going to have to dig for this. I don’t have the resource in front of me, but there was a wonderful article on some research done in the past about real-world communities. I believe they were applying it to on-line communities of the bulletin board past and attempting to show that communities continually fragment and crumble.
And that to create a community is to actually be in an endless war as the community will work to destroy itself at every turn. Naturally.
Thanks for this great article!!
Sean,
Thank you my friend, I really enjoy your posts. I would love to read that article on real world communities. Please let me know when you find it. Thanks again!
Found it!
It’s an oldy. It was based around the experiences at the Well, one of the early online communities. 2003 but still pertinent I think.
http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
It’s a bit of a book of a post.
And I’m really enjoying your blog A LOT! You have to tell me how you got comments to tie into mybloglog. Haven’t seen that before…
Sean,
Thanks for the link, I will absolutely take a read. It’s easy to incorporate your comments into MyBlogLog, just go into your page where you see the screenshot of your site and click on edit settings. There you have the option to add a secondary feed and name it anything you want. Let me know if you have any problems. Thanks again for the link Sean.