Brian Tinkler

So, Robert Scoble recently posted on why he is such an extremist (my own words) when it comes to being...

Scoble took notice of your comments, I'm going to have to say you strike a good point though. I don't think he is advocating RSS as a way to replace relationships though, just as a medium to enable easier communication between parties.

Hope Deeper in .NET went well, unfortunately I couldn't make it.

Until Microsoft eats its own dogfood, I wont be taking Scoble seriously...

"Blog Marketing" won't replace human interaction. But it is rapidly becoming a necessary tool to drive traffic to commercial sites. Here is an absolutely scary statistic I just noticed while writing a post on this subject to my own blog. When making the post, the term "Marketing Blog" drew 34,200 Google results. Three hours later, I made an edit to the post and rechecked the numbers - it was up to 263,000. I left the window with the term open, and waited five minutes. 282,000 results. Yow!

Better late than never, I'm posting my $.02 everywhere!

I AGREE WITH SCOBLE

Scoble used the word relationship in the context of a personal association with his readers. "I want to know the people who work on the products I buy." As an extreme view at the comment, you might imagine he wants to PHYSICALLY associate with his readers, maybe take us out to lunch or something. This perspective is very easy to argue with, as the post's comments have proved.

COMMUNITIES are discovered and realized through weblog syndication and aggregation. If you participate in that community, actively (by posting & discussing), or passively (just reading), you have a relationship with the community.

Like it or not, you have a relationship with everyone that crosses paths with your blog. They're your audience. Whether you know them or not, they may provide value to the information in your posts. If they post as JOHN Q, with no url, they still just used their relation with you, through your weblog, to provide value feedback to your post.

I CONSIDER EVERY ONE OF US AS HAVING A RELATIONSHIP WITH SCOBLE, since we read his blog, and discuss his topics. It doesn't mean he's wining & dining us, or vice-versa, it means that we're collectively providing value to a community that we are all part of.

(follow up: Weblogs and blog s&a is the current technology to discover & realize communities & relationships, as we progress, weblogging will be a thing of the past, in favor of something more convenient, more personal, etc.)

Gerry, you know I like you man, but your $.02 has been vested and you deserve $.03 in change!

You're talking about something different than a "relationship", as was Scoble. Communities CAN BE and often are "discovered" via blogs and aggregation, but participating in a community via those tools does not itself bring about a relationship. It only encourages a relationship and shows you others whom you may wish to have a relationship with due to the introduction provided by the tools.

I agree that "we're collectively providing value to a community that we are all part of", but that is NOT a relationship. It's just what you said it is and that is important. Think more about "people" and less about hits, readers, page views, link backs, comments, etc. People are the only entities that can have relationships. By all means, I love the tools and technologies and they HAVE helped me build relationships. However, they've only kicked off the possibility of relationship - the relationship begins when we talk on the phone, meet in person, IM with each other, or some other human interaction where communication can truly take place in a relationship fostering way.

Thanks for your comments - but quite frankly, would we be friends if we only read each other's blogs? Exactly!

I saw your point all along, but I'm thinking it all boils down to what kind of geek you are. Perhaps the better word for it in that context is 'association'.

In my opinion, Scoble is some sort of idiot:

http://dashslot.co.uk/modules/news/article.php?storyid=110