Monday, February 14, 2005
Scoble Paper For Class
Robert Scoble on the Blogosphere, Journalism, and Credibility
The “disintermediation of media” has arrived in the form of the blog, according to Robert Scoble, Technical Evangelist for Microsoft. Scoble chronicles evolving technology at his Scobleizer blog, where he manages to humanize Microsoft while encouraging discussion of the big ideas bouncing around the blogosphere every day.
Until recently, mass media was the chief interpreter of the world. If a person wanted information, he turned on CNN, picked up the New York Times, or tuned into NPR. All that has changed. Today’s news consumer can consult an infinite number of information sources. The blog has transcended its diary format and become a method to communicate human opinion in a public space. The interactive structure of the blog, allowing for instant feedback from the reader, has torn open the fabric of discourse. Ideas evolve in real time, jumping from blog to blog as memes that mutate and are interpreted as they move in viral patterns. The blog has made it difficult for the mass media to mediate information.
At a recent talk at SJSU, Scoble elaborated on this ongoing disintermediation. Understanding that journalism is a business, one can see the parallels of how the blog affects both corporations and traditional news sources. The immediacy of the blog has shrunk the space between the reader and the story. Information flows from the source: bloggers on the scene changed the way news was dispersed from the disasters of September 11th and the Asian tsunami. Without the gate keeping of traditional news media, all stories are published. Bloggers might prioritize different details of a story than a city editor would, but the editor no longer gets a choice. The only limits on the blogger are self-enforced.
Although there are examples of extremist bloggers, this only proves that there is an audience for everyone. That audience might be small or large, as in the case of Scoble, who ranks among the top 100 blogs at Technorati, a noted site that practices the tagging and taxonomy of the web. Scoble cites “linking behavior” as the method for establishing credibility. A blog is only as reliable as its inbound links; when a large number of people use a particular blog as a reference point, they confer credibility on the blogger. The audience is the evidence. Scoble expects that readers will “triangulate in on the truth” when there is any doubt as to the veracity of a story or the credibility of a source. The blogosphere corrects itself: the sheer number of readers and writers on any given topic makes it difficult to be wrong for long about anything.
This abundance of information can appear overwhelming to the reader at first, but new technologies such as RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and feed aggregators simplify the process. When a reader subscribes to an RSS feed, he commands his computer to automatically download the headlines and sometimes the entire entries of a given blog. These feeds constantly update themselves and are distributed into categories of his choosing. The resulting page aggregates the news: the reader gathers many sources of information into one document, cutting his news reading time exponentially. Scoble subscribes to over 1200 feeds.
Increased access to information makes for smarter readers of news and smarter consumers of products. Traditional news organizations and corporations are both struggling to keep up with the pace of the online word-of-mouth network. In recent months, bloggers have beaten traditional journalists and corporations to the punch on stories like Rathergate, Kryptonite’s ball-point pen problem, and CNN executive Eason Jordan’s statements about the U.S. military targeting journalists.
Bloggers are driving a tighter news cycle, forcing the mainstream media and corporations to enter the online foray themselves. Enter Robert Scoble. The Economist magazine this week called him Microsoft’s “Chief Humanizing Officer.” He does humanize a monolithic corporation, but he also acts as Microsoft’s good cop, their man on the street, the guy who will set things straight in the blogosphere, whether he is evangelizing the use of Tablet PCs or discussing what is acceptable to talk about in a corporate blog. He speaks honestly, avoids corporate doubletalk, and as a result, Scoble has earned the respect of thousands of readers. The Economist raises the question of whether this is the death knell of conventional corporate communications. As blogger Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine commented, “[I]f you actually tell the truth to people, you don’t have to spend on spin.”
technorati tag: scoble
The “disintermediation of media” has arrived in the form of the blog, according to Robert Scoble, Technical Evangelist for Microsoft. Scoble chronicles evolving technology at his Scobleizer blog, where he manages to humanize Microsoft while encouraging discussion of the big ideas bouncing around the blogosphere every day.
Until recently, mass media was the chief interpreter of the world. If a person wanted information, he turned on CNN, picked up the New York Times, or tuned into NPR. All that has changed. Today’s news consumer can consult an infinite number of information sources. The blog has transcended its diary format and become a method to communicate human opinion in a public space. The interactive structure of the blog, allowing for instant feedback from the reader, has torn open the fabric of discourse. Ideas evolve in real time, jumping from blog to blog as memes that mutate and are interpreted as they move in viral patterns. The blog has made it difficult for the mass media to mediate information.
At a recent talk at SJSU, Scoble elaborated on this ongoing disintermediation. Understanding that journalism is a business, one can see the parallels of how the blog affects both corporations and traditional news sources. The immediacy of the blog has shrunk the space between the reader and the story. Information flows from the source: bloggers on the scene changed the way news was dispersed from the disasters of September 11th and the Asian tsunami. Without the gate keeping of traditional news media, all stories are published. Bloggers might prioritize different details of a story than a city editor would, but the editor no longer gets a choice. The only limits on the blogger are self-enforced.
Although there are examples of extremist bloggers, this only proves that there is an audience for everyone. That audience might be small or large, as in the case of Scoble, who ranks among the top 100 blogs at Technorati, a noted site that practices the tagging and taxonomy of the web. Scoble cites “linking behavior” as the method for establishing credibility. A blog is only as reliable as its inbound links; when a large number of people use a particular blog as a reference point, they confer credibility on the blogger. The audience is the evidence. Scoble expects that readers will “triangulate in on the truth” when there is any doubt as to the veracity of a story or the credibility of a source. The blogosphere corrects itself: the sheer number of readers and writers on any given topic makes it difficult to be wrong for long about anything.
This abundance of information can appear overwhelming to the reader at first, but new technologies such as RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and feed aggregators simplify the process. When a reader subscribes to an RSS feed, he commands his computer to automatically download the headlines and sometimes the entire entries of a given blog. These feeds constantly update themselves and are distributed into categories of his choosing. The resulting page aggregates the news: the reader gathers many sources of information into one document, cutting his news reading time exponentially. Scoble subscribes to over 1200 feeds.
Increased access to information makes for smarter readers of news and smarter consumers of products. Traditional news organizations and corporations are both struggling to keep up with the pace of the online word-of-mouth network. In recent months, bloggers have beaten traditional journalists and corporations to the punch on stories like Rathergate, Kryptonite’s ball-point pen problem, and CNN executive Eason Jordan’s statements about the U.S. military targeting journalists.
Bloggers are driving a tighter news cycle, forcing the mainstream media and corporations to enter the online foray themselves. Enter Robert Scoble. The Economist magazine this week called him Microsoft’s “Chief Humanizing Officer.” He does humanize a monolithic corporation, but he also acts as Microsoft’s good cop, their man on the street, the guy who will set things straight in the blogosphere, whether he is evangelizing the use of Tablet PCs or discussing what is acceptable to talk about in a corporate blog. He speaks honestly, avoids corporate doubletalk, and as a result, Scoble has earned the respect of thousands of readers. The Economist raises the question of whether this is the death knell of conventional corporate communications. As blogger Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine commented, “[I]f you actually tell the truth to people, you don’t have to spend on spin.”
technorati tag: scoble
Comments:
Post a Comment
