January 24, 2005

Wanted to provide a quick recap of Robert Scoble's keyote at The Blog Business Summit for those of you who couldn't attend…

Despite a rather alarming tendency to ramble,Robert made some interesting observations about the value and future of blogging.

The key theme of his talk? That blogs are useful because they reveal –and enable – “passion concentrations.� Regardless of whether someone agrees or disagrees with the opinion of a blogger, if the topic is something readers are passionate about, they will migrate to and participate in that blog.

Robert says this is why so many journalists are keen on blogging; it gives them insight into what topics and trends seem to be most interesting to readers. Similarly, businesses can use blogging as a window into what customers are saying. No surprise there, but he went on to say that this type of “window� is now being used by some to predict how well a product will fare in the market based on feedback in the first 24 hours. For these same reasons, blogs can now dramatically amplify a product's failure or unprecedented success…a la the Halo 2 phenomenon.

Some other observations from Robert:
-He doesn't understand some of the concerns about ethics in blogging because he says blogs are “self-cleansing.� Namely, if a blogger writes something that is misleading or incorrect, readers will call him or her on it.
-He says that one of the fastest ways for a PR person to get the attention of a blogger isn't necessarily to pitch the blogger directly, but rather to try and get mentioned on the blogs that the target blogger reads. For instance, he says that if he sees the same theme pop up on 5 different sites, he starts paying attention.
-He also encourages bloggers to get a handle on their fears, saying that “everyone looks silly once in a while.� He went on to point out that bloggers shouldn't be concerned about creating a little controversy either because conflict breeds reader interest.

Robert concluded with a prediction for the future: that advancements in technology will soon allow readers to sort blogs (and e-mails) based on how many times (and how fast) they read and respond to them...which in turn opens the door to others being able to subscribe to patterns that map to their own interests.

…overall, not a bad way to start the Summit! And as a side note, they finally set us up with wireless access at the Summit. No power strips, though…

Posted by at January 24, 2005

Comments

Nathan Weinberg email - microsoft.blognewschannel.com/

You said "keyote". Oy.

Tara email - www.marqui.com

As I believe Anil pointed out, there is some bizarre problem with MT in that typos only appear after you hit publish...

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