Scoble Is Moving On

Boy, I picked the wrong Sunday to sleep in.

I spoke with Robert yesterday at Vloggercon, and he mentioned to me -- in utmost confidence -- that he was planning to resign his gig at Microsoft on Monday. He told me he was joining John Furrier at Podtech as a VP (I think) of Content, and of course, becoming a shareholder there.

The word has leaked out, and as Robert has related in his recent post, Correcting the Record about Microsoft, he is not leaving with ill-will for Microsoft, but simply making a change in his life to take a more entrepreneurial role in a small company.

I have long thought that Scoble would be happier in a small start-up, where the upside is considerably larger than working as a ham-and-egger, pulling down a paycheck in a slow-moving monolith like Microsoft. But that's his positive movement toward a goal, not a negative movement away from a situation that he hates.

So, Scoble has been forced by circumstances to counter the cacaphony of voices suggesting that he's unhappy with Microsoft for a hundred reasons, blindsided by the rumor mill:

This is a rapidly-evolving part of my life. I just made this decision and it got out before I was completely ready to talk about it. I invite you to meet with me at the VLoggerCon tomorrow evening at 3 to 6 p.m. in San Francisco where we'll talk about it further (and I'll post again tomorrow about what's going on in my life and why I made this decision).

So, as usual, everyone is piling on before the protagonist in the story gets his lines straight.

tags: robert+scoble, podtech, john+furrier, microsoft, blogging

Comments

[jeneane]

okay now, at last go-round I've counted six bloggers who say that Robert told ahead of time (but told them not to tell anyone), full well knowing how the blogworld works, that certain of the guys in the know wouldn't, or maybe were urged not to, keep their lips sealed.

So, when the leak springs, conjecture and "piling on" (btw, the blogosphere is one big pile by definition) are what naturally occur. Nothing wrong with that. ORIGINALITY, however, would be nice.

What I think is curious is the change over the years on how the blogosphere handles its own Big News. Where once creativity, wit, and humor were the milestone markers of how well you told a Hot Story, now every post about scoble's job change reads like a any old newspaper article. We used to let one another know when something went down, now we REPORT it.

At least Hugh has a sorta funny cartoon.

The guy's changing jobs, not having an appendectomy.

I want to read the spoof press release. (Too tired to write it myself.)

[Stowe Boyd]

Jeneane - I'm sorry I wasn't original. I actually didn't read all the million posts about Scoble's news, just his!

[jeneane]

Stowe--not you, all of us. A sign of the times when big news in the blog world is really Big News. (Although, I thought the crestfallen picture of Bill Gates from the BBC was kind of cute. They got a funny over on us.)