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38 postsRobert Scoble is an American blogger, technical evangelist, and author born in 1965. He is known for his technology evangelism and blogging work with Microsoft and Rackspace. He is married to Maryam Ghaemmaghami Scoble. He has three children; one from a previous marriage and two with Maryam.
Scoble talks about startups with products that he says are freaking people out when they are introduced now, but will become acceptable soon, like location tracking (Placeme) and gesture and body-language interpretation (Primesense).
In the future I’ll wake up and information will be spraying on my walls
Scoble talks with author Howard Rheingold on why curating web content is important, and how to do it well. He says he got interested in curation when he was running the AP wire machine at Sarasota State when the O.J. Simpson verdict came through, and he noticed that of hundreds of wire stories, the San Jose Mercury picked up only one or two:
Now, today, Twitter is really the replacement for the Associated Press wire machine…I just enjoy picking out interesting things or seeing patterns that other people don’t see in the news…how you become a good [curator] is to see patterns coming through the stream on Facebook or Twitter
Scoble talks at Stanford about social media in marketing, and how ideas spread. He says his background in tech goes back – he grew up in Silicon Valley about a mile from the Apple headquarters and started doing online communities in about 1984, when it could take several days for his computer club to dial up and receive email:
This world is moving very very quickly, so if you’re trying to build a brand and get noticed, if you’re a musician or a CEO or a business, or a social project, you’re going to have to keep competing with this world that just keeps moving at this speed
Scoble joins Rackspace as startup liaison officer. He will also partner with the company to build his new project, Building 43, a content and social networking community. About Building 43:
The first time I visited Google they gave me a tour of Building 43. I found it to be a fanciful place where not only did the founders have offices, but they had this fun board in the lobby called “Google’s Master Plan.” [..] seemed like a good metaphor for a community that’s for people who are fanatical about the Internet. Make Building 43 open to everyone.
In a poem-like post entitled, I am not an American, Scoble outlines many political positions and contrasts them with the words, “I am not American’. This is for dramatic effect — he has not actually changed his nationality. In the post he reveals that his mother is German and that he converted to Islam so that he could get married to Ghaemmaghami.
When I married I married a Muslim woman. I’m not an American.
Even worse, I converted to Islam so that we could be married in an Islamic ceremony. I’m not an American.
Scoble joins as Managing Director of the blog network’s video site, and runs Scoble.TV. Scobleizer also joins parent company’s Mansueto’s network.
I decided to join up with Fast Company because I wanted to work with a brand well known for covering innovation and technology in an authoritative, provocative manner
Scoble joins the company to run its video show network. He is reported to have been unhappy about being underutilized at Microsoft, with no travel budget for most of his tenure, and having to take personal days to attend blogging conferences.
Scoble and Israel publish the book about blogging as a part of business and for customer relations. Scoble on how to get blog traffic:
Use good headlines. Search engines bring lots of traffic. Also, link out. Also, email your friends about your blog, particularly when you have a good post that you think they will find interesting.
The magazine profiles Scoble’s work at Microsoft and on Scobleizer, saying that the blog is challenging traditional PR and corporate communications techniques. He says his freedom to criticize Microsoft helps credibility:
I’ve been pretty harsh on Microsoft over the years
Scoble talks to Baseline magazine about being one of the early business bloggers, how his writing affects people’s attitudes to Microsoft, passing on negative feedback to the company’s executive, and the $40 app from Userland that he uses to publish Scobleizer:
I’ve gotten email from people telling me they have changed their attitude about Microsoft because of my blog…[but] The lawyers are scared that I might say something that gets Microsoft screwed. There are certainly unwritten or understood rules. If I post the [prerelease] build of Longhorn, I’d get fired.
Scoble joins the company as a tech evangelist for Windows, and maintains a blog. He talks about how management approaches the blogging community at the company:
They’re sort of watching it. They’re allowing the bloggers to talk and hoping that nobody gets into trouble or gets sued, or a customer gets mad, or that we get quoted in the press and create a firestorm.
Scoble joins the company, a blogging content and software management startup, as VP of marketing. Dave Winer, the New York entrepreneur who owned the company, had given him some advice:
Blogging was hot
Scoble organizes conferences for Fawcette Technical Publications, which targets computer programmers and has a circulation of 110,000 and revenues of $10 million.
Scoble leaves San Jose State’s Journalism program, without graduating.
It is true that I didn’t graduate from college
Scoble enrols in the school’s Journalism program and switches to writing from photojournalism.
Scoble enrolls at West Valley Community College. He studies journalism and writes for the school paper.
