The A-List Blogger Dilemma

Categories: Citizen Journalism, Social MediaPosted on June 25th, 2007

Robert Scoble, who’s on a rant about Techmeme not caring about bloggers just swung over to my cubicle and told me about an upcoming rant/rave about Ustream and Kyte TV. It’s a good thing he talked to me because his rant would have been incorrect, and I gave him some key details that prevented him from looking foolish. As you know he relies on his community to help shape his conversations in the comments, often they correct him. In this case, they probably would have corrected him in comment #2.

Robert Scoble said; “The problem with being bombastic [as a blogger] is that you’re not always right.”

Rocky and I laughed our asses off, Robert too.

Just some food for thought today. I make mistakes in my post, and try to correct them as fast as possible. For those of you who’ve corrected me thanks, but no need to email me about typos or grammar, just facts please.

By the way, I’m not an A-lister, and I don’t care to be (not that there’s a definitive point where everyone agrees you are). I’m not that controversial (except when I say corporate websites are irrelevant), and I don’t pick blog fights or try to smash other people. I don’t embargo news, and I link to anyone I think is valuable, including my competitoirs. While not all A-listers do this, these are strategies they do to get to that upper echelon.

Lastly, when I meet journalists sometimes they shudder when I tell them I’m a blogger; “so you’re one of those guys that doesn’t fact check when reporting”. I often respond to them: “I’m not reporting, I’m having conversations with my friends”.

Frank Gruber is coming over here in a few minutes, he’s going to show us MyAOL, I’ve been ranting that AOL is not innovative, they’re like a stalled bus, Frank may prove me wrong.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 4:01 pm and is filed under Citizen Journalism, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I am glad to here that you are not aspiring to be an A-list blogger. I subscribe to your feeds because I value your integrity. I agree, too many A listers go on wild rants to generate controversy and improve their rank on technorati. Keep doing what you have been doing Jeremiah and leave the other trash for the scumbags.

Posted by Shannon on June 25th, 2007 at 4:51 pm

yeah Ccoble does get a lot of heat from some nasty ppl on the web.

Keep up the good post and if ppl don’t like it, they don’t have to read it. it’s a free world

Thanks again!!

Posted by Thomas Han on June 25th, 2007 at 5:41 pm

Shannon, Thomas

Wow, thanks so much for the kind words, each of your thoughts and support mean a lot.

I’ve realized there are two things one can do to get people to come to your site

1) Be interesting
2) Add Value

I go for number 2. Add valuable and helpful information.

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on June 25th, 2007 at 7:27 pm

But I think that “being bombastic” is at times a good thing too. Shows we are all human and have gut feelings, emotions and own thoughts. Sometimes it is OK to be wrong. Lets not sanitize things too much.

Posted by Robert Zolkos on June 25th, 2007 at 10:45 pm

Not sure why Scoble thinks Techmeme doesn’t love bloggers…most of the news there links to bloggers on a regular basis, including Scoble.

Posted by Damon Billian on June 27th, 2007 at 1:12 am

Jeremiah, completely agree. Too often people try to place blogging and the news into the same category and for the most, they are completely different. There are only a couple of blog sites like Crunch, OM and Paid Content that I trust as giving me solid synopsis of the news in a current awareness manner. The smart bloggers disclaim the rumors they push and it still makes for interesting conversation/reading.

I think long term, the world has to find a symbiotic way where the news industry survives because without news the conversations sure are going to lose some interest value. I’m not sure how many recognize the difference between news reporting and blogging, and the value each brings to the other.