First off, I’m a big fan of Robert Scoble. His blog has a high signal-to-noise ratio, and he’s generally very readable. Above all, the fact that Microsoft allows/encourages him to blog has been largely responsible for the much more positive perception of Microsoft now held by many people.
However, someone needs to take issue with Scoble’s professed status as an amateur blogger. In his response to a rather pointless article in The Register about IE7 beta 1 and third-party plugins, Scoble reiterates that he doesn’t get paid for journalism.
I’m not sure whether he’s saying that his blog isn’t journalism, or that Microsoft doesn’t pay him to maintain it. Either way, it’s clear that he posts during ‘normal working hours’, and that Microsoft allows him to do do (and thereby encourages the practice). It’s also pretty clear that blogging is a form of journalism.
In other words, Scoble should be prepared to acknowledge his blog’s status as a (paid for) element of Microsoft’s marketing strategy. Or have I missed something?
1 response so far ↓
1 Robert Scoble // Jul 30, 2005 at 07:06
Most of my blogging is done at night and on weekends. It’s 12:06 a.m. here right now.