DISQUS

I'm probably going to hell for defending this (a fate I'll gladly accept for having defended John Mayer) but the reality is that a LOT of people in those type of circles have open relationships. Blame living in the Los Angeles area as long as I have I guess but you've eventually seen so much of this that you don't even question it. Honestly, if I meet a young Musician or Actress who are dating each other I consider it more likely than not that the relationship is open. I mean, I'm not sure I'd call either Anniston or Mayer young to be honest but they seem determined to act that way.

Bottom line, I would be...floored if John Mayer and Jennifer Anniston weren't in an open relationship

I'm sorry but I have to call BS here.

Saying nothing through a month of universally bad PR in which your own customers rebel against you and then saying it was a mistake isn't exactly great leadership.

Honestly, its bad even for damage control...

I hate to be snide, but a note to anyone doing a video interview with Scoble (or anyone else I guess). If the interviewer asks you why your site is special and you answer that you're #1 in another country and then the interviewer asks again and you go on to give your Alexa rating then I'm probably not going to watch the rest of your interview.

Maybe I'm just cranky, but there's a reason Scoble's throwing softballs to give you a chance to give your elevator pitch and that reason is because people lose interest if you don't tell them why they should be interested in you.

I did watch the 5 minute version but to be honest…and yes I know how silly this sounds in context…it felt a little too short to me.

I guess to me it seems like 22 minutes is the golden number. That’s the same length as your average TV show. I would devote time 3 times a week to watch the Scoble TV Show I just don’t have time to watch several Scoble movies.

But yes, if you can afford to produce shorter versions and keep the longer, uncut versions available I’d think that would be ideal.

Not to put my head in the lion’s mouth but I have to get on board with the “videos are too long” crowd. I think what Rachel said is basically where I stand, ANY interview can be sliced down. I’m sure, without a doubt, that 95% of the people on 60 minutes could fill an hour but I wouldn’t watch if they did because I don’t have 4 hours to devote to 60 minutes.

That, to me, is the crux of the argument. I’m not saying your videos are bad I’m simply saying that I (and I think most people) don’t have time to watch them. Maybe I’m wrong, I remember you doing little “mini-surveys” back at Channel 9 asking people what they liked best and I’m assuming “long” won so maybe that is where the audience is. All I can say is back when you did short videos I used to watch every single one and since you’ve gone to this long format I’ve maybe seen 10 or 12 total.

And I’m someone who goes out of his way to try to make the time. But try to see it from the perspective of your customers here. If you’re doing an interview that a person thinks might be interesting they’ll almost certainly watch it if its only 20 minutes and almost certainly not if its over an hour.

Also, to answer Dawn D.: because some of us actually have jobs where we (a) have to concentrate a lot of the time or (b) have meetings the majority of the time (or at least far more than we’d ever want to have).

Well, I certainly think paper will eventually go away but I don’t think it will be any time even remotely soon. The problem with books and to a certain extent magazines is permanence. Your favorite copy of Moby Dick is not going to crash on you where as your hard drive very well might.

I think the turning point will come when someone manages to make a deal with all the media companies to provide some kind of digital repository that people can keep their stuff in for life. This is a much bigger problem though than it seems because the dirty truth of the matter is that media companies know people lose their media and count on it for additional sales. I can think of several CDs that I’ve bought at least 3 times in my life because the original got lost or damaged.

So allowing people a sense of permanence in their digital media means giving up a huge revenue stream for publishers. On that same note, digital media means no more “Special Editions” for book publishers. A new cover goes over a lot better than an e-book with a new jpg file included.

Based on all that I don’t see paper disappearing anytime in my lifetime. There are just too many forces pulling against each other to allow it to happen. That said, newspapers are probably dead (I sometimes find it hard to believe that hasn’t already happened yet)

I just wanted to give kudos to Mikesax. The reality is that every time China does something like this the blogosphere is up and arms but I've never seen a dip in iPod Mini sales (made in China). Not to mention all the generic car chargers, headphone adapters, hands-free kits, etc...

I mean, Olympic athletes spend their whole lives waiting for what is usually their one and only chance to compete so to suggest depriving them of that to prove a point is pretty wrong. Especially when no one is willing to make even the smallest sacrifice in their own lives.

I actually agree completely with your post but couldn't help myself from pointing out one irony. That irony is that you're essentially endorsing the idea of a semantic web on a blog with a RSS 2.0 feed.

If people really believe the Semantic Web to be the future than shouldn't they make a move to support it with their own blogs? And isn’t the first step to doing that having your feed in a format that is strict enough to be used in a semantic scenario (Atom would probably be the best choice but RDF based RSS 1.0 would also work)?

Anyway, sorry for the off topic mini-rant but I just had to point that out

I don’t know. I do agree that this is a crucial feature for Facebook but they really are playing with fire at the same time. This is exactly the type of change that could break untold numbers of Facebooks apps and turn into a publicity nightmare before you know it. I hate to criticize people who are trying to do the right thing I just think they made a much larger mistake than they know when they didn’t include something like this from the start.

Fixing that mistake is going to be a lot harder than just adding a new feature.

As far as LinkedIn, the reality is that Facebook has a big tech following but most people in other business areas don’t take it too seriously. It’s the equivalent of MySpace in that they see it as more of a kid’s toy. LinkedIn on the other hand has a reputation as a network for making business connections and I think that marketing advantage will be enough to keep them alive for years to come.

I think the focus here is wrong in that I don’t think Microsoft’s problem is about “story” or anything to do with marketing. Microsoft’s problem lies in your first two items on the “reasons Bungie works” list.

I have friends who work at Microsoft and here is how the average conversation about work goes with them…

My MS Friend: So, I was working on xxx and I thought, wouldn’t it be great if we did [New Idea].

Me: That would be cool, you should totally talk to your supervisor about it.

My MS Friend: No.

Me: Why Not?

My MS Friend: Too much work, I’d need a VP to sign off and I’d need to convince the Product Manager and he’d have a bunch of studies saying no one wants it and it just wouldn’t be worth the hassle.

Me: You’re kidding, I love your idea but it’s a relatively small change for god sakes

My MS Friend: Yeah…but that’s how it is…

Bottom line, as far as I’ve been able to tell, is that Microsoft has become a company that runs on marketing and that new features are determined by surveys, not anyone inside the company. The result is you have an entire company of people who feel disheartened and un-empowered.

The irony is, most customers don’t know what they want until you show it to them. The list of companies that started this post is made almost completely of companies that made products that no one would have even known to ask for.

I have nothing to add except to say that I'm not really someone who is afraid of risk as far as on line ventures are concerned but even I have to admit I probably won't give Mint a try. It looks great I just can't bring myself to put all my financial records in the hands of a company who I have no experience with.

As was said above, I think getting acquired is their best bet. Being a small company is just too big of a draw back in the financial space.

Paul: Actually Pope’s do write new doctrine based on (and presumably inspired by) the bible which constitute new commandments to the church. The most notable example of this is Vatican II in which the Second Vatican Council created a bunch of edicts that other Catholics weren’t crazy about. You can read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Vatican_Cou...

Just recently (last week) the new Pope rescinded one of those new commandments by allowing the use of Pre-Vatican II Latin Mass. So it really does happen all the time that Pope’s change commandments to their parishioners.

So actually, your example really made my point perfectly. :)

Well, and I want to point out in advance that this comment makes the mistake of assuming “Scoble = Winer” which isn’t always the case (but which seems to be the case 99% of the time). That said, given this comment…

“But, what really is cooking here is that RSS has been moved to big companies to control. How so? Well, the RSS Advisory board, which includes members from Cisco, Yahoo, Netscape, FeedBurner (er, Google), Microsoft, and Bloglines and this new unofficial board +is+ changing the RSS spec all the time (they are now up to version 2.0.9). Dave Winer, who founded that spec says that’s in direct contradiction with the original charter of the RSS Advisory Board that he founded when he moved RSS from UserLand over to Harvard University.”

Now, to make sure I was right on this I went back and found the post from Roger Cadenhead’s blog which you can find here: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench/news/3217/da...
In it, it quotes Dave’s resignation from the board where he said…

“After giving it much thought, I've decided to resign from the RSS Advisory Board, effective July 1. I feel that the process for clarifying the spec is now well-understood by the existing members, and we have started a positive working relationship with several leading aggregator developers. ... I wish the continuing members of the board the very best, and of course I will continue to be a huge booster of RSS and syndication technology and I will offer my opinion, through this blog, naturally, as always.”

A few points to make here the first of which being that the “leading aggregator developers” are Google, Yahoo, Microsoft et al. So Dave actually set out this path before leaving. Second he encouraged the board to keep working on the spec.

Finally, I think someone has to make the point that the people pushing Atom ARE NOT the people trying to clarify RSS and, to the best of my knowledge, the people trying to clarify the RSS spec have never been active in the Atom community. I think it was very unfair of you (Scoble) to make that accusation.

P.S. Ok one last point which is that Userland, a company, revised the spec time and time again in the early days and that always seemed to be ok. The idea that it was ok then but that the spec is sacrosanct now doesn't really track either.

Jay - I think they mean for online tools not for their own personal use. See the side bar (right side) on scripting.com for one example of this