Dennis Kennedy (a legal blogger) posts on his blog what it's like to be in Scoble Country. It's a good read and well worth the 2-3 pages of solid reading. In it, Dennis provides a glimple of what it's like to be Robert Scoble - who reads 700+ RSS/ATOM feeds per day in his favorite aggregator (NewsGator for Outlook 2003).
Here's a small collection of the points I found the most interesting:
1. Scoble Really is Amazing. I know that I'll shade the truth and underestimate the time commitment involved in reading feeds, so I suspect Scoble does as well. Let's just say that you'll not be spending any less than two hours a day reading feeds. And I'm a really fast reader. To sustain Scoble's level for the period of time he has done and still produce the output that he has is mind-boggling.
I'm currently subscribed to 95 feeds. I've never been a speed reader (reading at the speed I can speak - fast, but not a speed reader by any stretch of the imagination), so reading that many feeds takes me somewhere in the ballpark of 2+ hours per day. Probably an hour at work... and an hour or so after. It would be much longer, but I only *actually* read about half of them.
3. The Number of Excellent Bloggers Will Consistently Surprise You; So Will the Number of People You Know Who Have No Familiarity Whatsoever with Many of the Bloggers You Read on a Daily Basis. My approach, like Scoble's is to be as expansive as possible in the types of blogs/feeds I read. I don't understand people who monitor only blogs in their small area of interest.
I'm guilty. I try to read outside my circle of interest, but time often gets in the way. I may be very left-centered on many issues, but I try to give the right air-time. They can't all be wrong, right? Heh.
13. The Feed-reading Experience is Vastly Different from the Blog-reading Experience and Many People Do Not Appreciate the Difference. This point is one to think carefully about. When in Scoble Country, you rarely visit a blog in the traditional sense. RSS has been described by J.D. Lasica as "News that comes to you." Those five words contain the revolution. I'm a regular reader of many blogs that I rarely, if ever, visit. I couldn't tell you what they look like, what ads or blogrolls are there, or any other details. I make no value judgment about that; it's just the way it is. If you accept that bloggers like me are important opinion influencers, this fact is something that you'll need to understand and adjust for.
I rarely visit blog sites anymore, and have stopped going to Slashdot. Slashdot holds a special place in my heart... but after they kept banning NewsGator Web Edition, I gave up on them. Instead I listen to Andrew McCaskey's Slashdot Review podcast. It's the same info, but now I get it while commuting back and forth to work. ;)
15. If You Don't Understand the Difference Among Headline Feeds, Excerpt Feeds and Full-text Feeds, Your Blog May Fail Without You Ever Understanding Why. The rules on the selection of types of feeds have solidified. If you generate headline feeds, you lose. No one likes them. When I decide to streamline my feed subscriptions, I use the common rule of unsubscribing from headline feeds. Poof, you're gone. There is a general preference for full-text feeds these days. If you use excerpt feeds, you must have compelling content or give a good description. If you don't, your audience will tend to move on rather than click-through to your blog to read the full post. In Scoble Country, I got very close to using a "delete all excerpt feeds" approach when pruning my number of subscriptions. Unfortunately for many the new blog-focused approaches initiated by established media companies, generating a headline feed to "protect your content" or "drive traffic" to your ads probably guarantees that the bloggers with the most influence will not become part of your site's audience. In general, you want to go with a full-text feed or give a choice of full-text and excerpt. For me, I favor full-text all the time.
Poof, your gone. I absolutely abhor the excerpt feeds. Rarely do I tolerate them. You shouldn't tolerate them either, especially if they have ads in them.
24. When You Leave Scoble Country, You Can't Assume People Are Familiar with the Same Information You Are. When I was in law school at Georgetown, I often found that I would get swept up in the Washington controversy of the day that was gripping everyone. I'd talk to a friend in another part of the country and find that they hadn't even heard of the issue. Watch for that phenomenon when you are in Scoble Country. Not too many people know the same players and it's a relatively small number of people who are conversant with issues that may be front and center in the blog world. Go to a party and start telling people that Robert Scoble says such and such and count the number of people with blank looks. Or use Adam Curry and podcasting in the same sentence at your office holiday party and see the reaction you get. It might be a different story next year, but you have to keep this blog thing in perspective.
Too true. I did it just today... and was greeted with a blank look (sorry Mika!).
Though this is only an excerpt - it's interesting to peel back the layers of Scoble Country.
posted @ Wednesday, February 23, 2005 8:09 PM