Somehow, Dare Obasanjo has conflated my complaints about Yahoo's new bookmarks tool with Jeneane Sessum's contributions to the discussions re: Ze Frank's attack on Rocketboom's metrics:
I read Jeneane's Sessum's post to be quite irritating. The smug assumption that if you like something then it must be more popular or at least 'better' on some made-up axis than what everyone else likes is a hallmark of the blogosphere echo-chamber. You see the same kind of egotistical thinking in Stowe Boyd's post criticizing Yahoo! bookmarks in comparison to del.icio.us.
Hmmm. I get the impression that Dare is countering the ideas of Scoble -- now that he's left Microsoft, people like Dare might be trying to assume his mantle as 'Microsoft lead blogger.' Scoble said that Jeneane was onto something, which Dare quotes -- "I was just reading Jeneane Sessum’s post about the latest Ze Frank/Rocketboom dustup and she’s right, we need to measure stuff other than just whether a download got completed or not. She says we need a “likeability” stat." -- and Dare attacks her for being egotistical and irritating. But he doesn't attack Robert directly.
So, Dare, what did you think of Scoble's ideas? You didn't actually say. You just quote him, and then run off to other topics.
And oh, then, as an afterthought, he includes me in the mix, regarding my thoughts on the new Yahoo Bookmarks release. Why does that have anything to do with it? Except that it is another story on Techmeme that he may have stumbled upon, and it shares the "same egotistical thinking", I guess. Pardon me for liking or disliking it, and then writing about it. I guess that's the old blogosphere echo chamber, eh, Dare?
Dare, just for the record, a closer reading of the piece would lead you to understand that I am suggesting that Yahoo pull together all its loose ends -- del.icio.us, upcoming.org, flickr, Bookmarks, and so on -- and present us with a consistent user experience around social sharing. If you think that egotistical, then you are just confused or ignorant. It's opinion, yes, but that doesn't mean that it's nothing but naked egotism.
If you want to pick a fight with Scoble, just go do it. Don't indirectly pick fights with people -- like Jeneane -- that he quotes and agrees with -- or random passers-by posting on completely different subjects.
I mean, shouldn't your comments about my post be in a different paragraph, at least?
"likeability" is a tough nut to crack. the browser can't really read your mind, the user must actively indicate how much they like a site. I've been grooving on the Crawler toolbar recently, it has a button called "SiteRank" where the user can rate the site and choose to write a review.
Formalizing a user site ranking paradigm is needed to address this issue, let's keep looking at it.
BTW, Crawler.com and it's sister site Inbox.com offer awesome services. You get 5 GB free hotlinkable storage for each account, you can have as many accounts as you desire. It has wonderful email, contacts, webnotes, photo albums, calendar - all done professionally and techically excellent. Online storage is integrated into the Windows file system that you can treat almost like any other Windows folder (no opening files from their webfolders, you must copy locally first, also you can drag and drop into and out of them). You can also track other email accounts and get notifications - this is done much better than any other add-on or extension that I've seen for Windows, IE, and Firefox. I'm very impressed with this company.
Posted by: rickdog | October 26, 2006 at 09:34 AM
Three thoughts:
-Guilt by association--sorry stowe. ;-)
-Projection, thy name is Dare.
-I was just trying to say that no one [sic] LIKES RocketBoom anymore. And that likeability matters when you're talking about influence.
jeesh. try having an opinion around this joint.
Posted by: jeneane | October 26, 2006 at 11:39 AM
Rickdog - I'll take a look.
Jeneane - Is no problem, sister.
Posted by: Stowe Boyd | October 26, 2006 at 06:03 PM
How about a "usefulness to me" stat ?
That seems to have become a core feautre of the Amazon reviews a long, long time ago .. and eventually a core test of something is not whther you "like' it but whther it helps you .. advance or deepen your understanding, increase your skill, enhance your connections, etc.
Posted by: Jon Husband | October 27, 2006 at 06:43 PM