Scoble Is Imploding

Wow. As I have said before, Robert Scoble is often over his head when he starts wading into the deep end of the tech pool, but he is definitely drowning with his recent Mahalo Google video:

[from Epicenter - Wired Blogs by Adario Strange]

[...]

Among Scoble's many thought crimes is his recycling of Jason Calacanis' idea that a human created directory is a search engine. For the last time, a human-edited directly [directory] is not a search engine, it's a curated data pool. Ironically, Calacanis himself saw through Scoble's enthusiasm masked as analysis and responded by saying, "Clearly something is happening here (and you don't know what it is... do you... Mr. Scoble)."

Keep in mind that by merely mentioning Google and Mahalo in the same sentence Scoble did Calacanis a huge favor, so the soft admonishment from Calacanis speaks to the level of inaccuracy of Scoble's presentation (rant? job application?). Adding to Scoble's tragic video folly is the fact that just weeks ago, following Calacanis' Gnomedex presentation, Scoble wrote via Twitter, "Calacanis dug his own grave here," and, "If I ran a conference and I invited Jason I'd just call the conf. session 'an ad for Calacanis.'" An interesting critique considering that Scoble's new video—in which he digs his own grave—feels like a corporate promotional spot for Mahalo.

Other bloggers of note have piled on, most notably Danny Sullivan over at SearchEngineLand who penned a massive 4,000 word screed against Scoble's video and Rand Fishkin who started off his post with the pithy title "I Used to Respect Robert Scoble's Opinion..." While we always suspected Scoble's too-quick adoption and evangelism of [Fill In The Blank] Web 2.0 technology spoke to an irrational exuberance unsupported by logic and insight, this video serves as final confirmation.

I have been shielded from much of this based on my reluctance to watch video, especially Scoble, instead of reading prose: I know, I know, I'm a fogey. But there it is: I would rather read (which is do very quickly) that listen to someone blather (which they do very slowly). My mind wanders.

But I did listen to this, today. I love the fact that Robert starts the blather by pointing out that search doesn't reach in to the video, and that therefore I got there by something other than google search. Is that good?

And I hate the fact that his video doesn't allow me to randomly jump ahead.

I had to quit, though: it's like the Marx Brothers channeling Gartner.

Robert, it's maybe time to go back to evangelizing blogging for some large slow-moving enterprise, I think.

Comments

[Robert Scoble]

The video does let you jump ahead, but since you're not interested in figuring out what place video has to play in the social media space I'll just let you flail.

[Roo Reynolds]

I share your aversion to video. For the same reasons, I'm not a huge fan of audio either (though at least with audio I can usually skip around). Regardless, I read Scoble's intro and watched the videos this morning.

Scoble concludes his post with

Oh, and the only way you’ll watch these videos is if someone tells you to watch them. No Google. No TechMeme (this post is too short to show up there).

He's half right. On the one hand, I did watch them because Adario Strange's post on the Wired blog told me "Robert Scoble's tech analysis cred took a nosedive yesterday". On the other, it turns out I could have found it through Google after all; the first video is the top result for google.com/search?q=social+graph+based+search

[Roo Reynolds]

Oh, and it did make it to Techmeme too.

[David Bloody Mantripp]

I've really managed to work out why this guy matters - or mattered. Am I missing something ? Just noise and pompous echo chamber witter as far as I can see.

Very nice design by the way Stowe. Green is so fetching :-)

[Bob Warfield]

I sympathize with your message on preferring not to watch videos. I think Scoble runs a huge risk in starting to push these videos regardless of what you may think of the content. The risk is that things like preferring video vs writing may be personality traits that infect large segments. If that's so, Scoble built his readership from people who liked reading and he risks alienating them by switching to a new medium.

For more that goes beyond Scoble, read my blog post on Personality Types and Web 2.0:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/08/29/web-20-personality-types/

[Stephanie Booth]

Robert: video does allow you to jump ahead, but like audio, it forces you to do it blind. You can't skim, and that is a HUGE disadvantage.

If I'm reading a post and I don't find it that interesting, I can jump ahead, but I choose where I'm jumping to because my eyes skim the paragraphs I'm skipping while I go there. No such thing in video or audio.

Text summaries are really important (or at least, shownotes that summarize somewhat).

[Bobbie Johnson]

I agree, pretty much, with you on this Stowe. I think there are a few problems with online video; it's not easy to skim, it's hard to search and it is not background media. The first two of those are being approached (say with the scrubbing techniques Apple's introduced, or with complex video analysis).

But the third one is a big issue: short-form online video demands your attention, regardless of its quality. With text your eyes can find what they want, with pictures you have to work harder.

Videos need to be visually skimmable, and that's not something - it means you have to fill them with images that are interesting and arresting AND make the entire video available straight off the bat (ie streaming isn't that useful).

If the video is all about what you SAY and not what you SEE then I don't see why it should be video at all.

[jeneane]

I can't imagine fancying myself to such a degree that I could delude myself into thinking that ANYONE would want to watch me yammer on for 37 minutes. Not to mention, all that expensive equipment and it looks like doodoo.