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Good uncle Robert Scoble from Microsoft - helps big blogging company but does not care about small bloggers and enthusiasts January 31, 2005 [General] | By Edward J. R. Robert Scoble is the greatest. [...] Someone get Scoble a raise ... writes Jason Calacanis, who owns big blogging company Weblogs, Inc, that runs several slave blogs, including famous Engadget. Weblogs Inc lately got 4 million USD in investment from Mark Cuban. What is going on? Why is Jason Calacanis thankful to some Microsoft employee? Who is Robert Scoble? We will explain it all to you and we will reveal to you also new, yet not well known widely, world of master-bloggers and slave-bloggers... slavery in 21st century? Yes! But in cyberspace... Robert Scoble: 
... is a Matrix-like superhero and although his job position is very low at Microsoft (i.e. in real world) and he takes no managerial or product decisions, in blogosphere (i.e. "a Matrix") he is very well known, thanks to Dave Winer, who has "Oracle"-like powers. Here is a quote from a book about blogging "Who let the blogs out?" that explains it: In the Matrix trilogy, the main character, Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, has realized that reality is not really reality but instead a simulated version of reality. With this knowledge, he is able to accomplish amazing things like dodge bullets and fly. In this alternate reality, Neo is a superhero. With my blog, I have created a proxy for myself online. This version of me has gotten two book deals and a dream job at one of the world's most innovative companies. In the real world, I am a state-college dropout. How did I do this? Welcome to this strange other dimension within which I have Matrix-like powers. * * * * * In fact Robert Scoble is employed at Channel9 division of Microsoft, where he runs with digital video camera around Microsoft and is making video interviews with various departments at Microsoft - all in all a dull job without any influence on product decisions, etc. However Robert Scoble, thanks to link-love from Dave Winer, for whom he worked previously, has become an arrogant alpha-blogger... Lately screen shots of Windows Mobile code name "Magneto" leaked at NeoWin website at first, and several enthusiast websites and bloggers have copied them to their servers from NeoWin website. Subsequently Microsoft has sent lawyers, who started threatening anybody who had these screen shots ... therefore most people got scared and simply removed these screen shots. However Robert Scoble made an exception for his pal Jason Calacanis and Microsoft made an exception for Engadget that is part of Weblogs, Inc, blogging company. While everybody else had to remove these screen shots, Engadget didn't have to do it! What is wrong, with this, that Robert Scoble did? This is wrong: thanks to Robert Scoble Microsoft corporation treats better some big blogging company than true enthusiasts like for example MoDaCo community. Big blogging company? Yes. In fact Weblogs Inc works in this way that several slave-bloggers are paying 50% of their revenues to master-blogger (i.e. Weblogs Inc company owned by Jason Calacanis) if the total sum of revenues for given month exceeds 1000 USD. If it is smaller than 1000 USD then mercifully slave-blogger is allowed to take everything to himself/herself. Such big blogging company is detrimental for many individual bloggers, enthusiast sites and news sites. Why it is so? Firstly because it uses synergy effects and enforces strict linking policies where slave-blogger is not allowed to put links in blog-rolls to external non-WeblogsInc blogs, where slave-blogger is forced to support other blogs from WeblogsInc farm with plenty of targeted links designed to improve page rank of other slave-bloggers in the farm. If this would not be enough in fact slave-bloggers are not just writing blogs that are linking to other blogs and news sites, but they also have such a big power and popularity (that may or may not be related to being part of the farm owned by master-blogger) that actually they are sending several people to conferences and in fact bring their own reports and the need to link to external news sites and blogs totally disappears. Conclusion: Robert Scoble in fact is not "a good uncle that helps fellow bloggers" but he is an arrogant alpha-blogger who helps other alpha-bloggers, bloggers who praise him, and big blogging companies like the one owned by Jason Calacanis. Microsoft on the other hand unfortunately is destroying Windows Mobile community by requesting to remove Windows Mobile Magneto screen shots from all news sites and blogs, except those one where "good uncle Robert Scoble" helped. Contrary to Apple corporation that has plenty of good will to lose without any effects on sales, Microsoft has yet a lot of good will to win over, and Microsoft should not be persecuting enthusiasts by sending lawyers! And if Microsoft does it (after all every corporation has a right to copyright protect their yet-unreleased products), then Microsoft should treat equally all websites - news websites and blogs alike. Related links:
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