Tag Archives: Robert Scoble

From The Mouth Of A Guru: What The 2010 Web Will Look Like

Image representing Robert Scoble as depicted i...
Image via CrunchBase

Robert Scoble is a one of the thought leaders and innovators on the web today.  He is a smart, engaging guy who gets around to listen and exchange ideas with many of the other web leaders. Scoble’s a great favorite of mine and when he speaks, I listen.  And so do a lot of other people.

On his blog today ,Scobleizer — Exploring the 2010 Web Scoble talks about going back to basics and refocusing on his blog. He talks about what some have called his obsession with Twitter and Facebook, where he has, in fact, been a major player. Scoble explains this by saying “All my fun experiments were over on Twitter, Facebook, or friendfeed. You could see that. Mike Arrington even tried to do a friendfeed intervention last December.”  So now, Scoble is trying to bring that sense of fun, experimentation and real time zest into his newly re-invented blog.  He is also trying to show the rest of us now to do the same, in real time.

(About a week ago I posted From The Mouth of A Guru: Why You Should Blog And Not Just Tweet which has many of the same caveats about the value of focusing your work on your own blog and letting Twitter be your outpost.)

In that vein Scoble lays out what he thinks the future of the web will look like:

“1. It’s real time. Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed are all moving toward architectures and displays that refresh in real time, or let you see what’s happening right now. We are at the extreme beginnings of that trend. You really should watch the video of the panel discussion I moderated on the state of real time search to get a sense of where this is going. That panel discussion will be remembered for years as a key point. One of the panel members runs Facebook search team. Yes, Facebook is working on real time search. (That video is in two parts since the meeting ran almost two hours long. I really do recommend watching it. Part I is here. Part II is here.).
2. It’s mobile. You’ll see this more next week when the Where 2.0 conference rolls into town, but if 40,000 iPhone apps hasn’t convinced you yet, nothing will. On Monday I’m meeting with Nokia to find out the latest.
3. It’s decentralized. Look at my behaviors. I’m all over the place. Six years ago I did only one thing: blog. Now I Flickr. YouTube. Seesmic. Friendfeed. Facebook. Twitter. And many more. Go to Retaggr and see all the places I’m at.
4. Pages now built out of premade blocks. You build these pages by copying a line of Javascript code to your template. This is very simple once you see how to do it, but for someone who doesn’t know code, or where in the template to go, this is VERY daunting. Silicon Valley has NOT made it simple enough yet for the mainstream to build highly useful pages. See the friendfeed block to the right of my words? I added that by copying and pasting from the friendfeed widget page. If you know where to look a TON of cool pre-built blocks like this are available for you to put on your website or blog.
5. It’s social. This seems obvious to anyone on Twitter or Facebook, but how many businesses add their customers to their pages? Not many. Silicon Valley has done a horrible job so far of explaining why adding people to your websites matters.
6. It’s smart. We’re seeing more and more smarts added to the web every day. Tonight Wolfram’s new search engine turned on. Have you played with it? That’s the 2010 web and check out what you can do with it.
7. Hybrid infrastructure. When I visited 12seconds.tv in Santa Cruz they told me they were using a hybrid approach: they own a rack of servers but they also use Amazon’s S3 to “cloud burst” or take up the slack for files that are popular…

PR People: I even made a place you can pitch me on 2010 web ideas. It’s interesting that a bunch of people are subscribed to that room — probably lots of tech bloggers looking for ideas.”

I put in that last link so those of you who are bloggers could go fishing there for ideas.

I’m certainly going to watching the evolution of Scobles newlly updated blog and trying some of the same tools and strategies myself.  Are you?  If you do, please leave a comment and tell us what works for you and what doesn’t.  We all in this giant web conversation together, now that Web 3.o and the interconnections of social media and dynamic linking have arrived

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Caveats for Newspapers; Clues For A Stand Out Website

Image representing Robert Scoble as depicted i...
Image via CrunchBase

Robert Scoble, Scobleizer, wrote what, to me, was a really amazingly insightful article on how the newspaper industry has let the Net take away bits and pieces of its franchise until there’s almost nothing left. But he does  go on to mention a few remaining pieces worth saving and pursuing on or off line. ( The newspaper industry just gave away another free meal, er Twitter: do they have any left?).  Examples of the giveaways:

“Free meal #1. Giving away classified advertising to Craig’s List.
Free meal #2. Giving away photography to Flickr (look at the photos from the Chinese Earthquake, why didn’t this happen on a newspaper branded site?).
Free meal #3. Giving away front page news to blogs like Huffington Post.
Free meal #4. Giving away “small” community news like births, deaths, birthdays, etc to Facebook.
Free meal #5. Giving away real-time news to Twitter.
Free meal #6. Giving away news distribution to Google News and Amazon Kindle, among others. With new sites like Kosmix coming on strong (hundreds of percent of growth month over month).
Free meal #7. Giving away restaurant reviews to Yelp.
Free meal #8. Giving away traffic information to Google Maps.
Free meal #9. Giving away celebrity news to Facebook and Twitter. (Why is Oprah on both of those, and why didn’t the newspaper industry lock up Oprah and keep her on a newspaper brand?)
Free meal #10. Giving away local news to Topix (at least that was funded by a newspaper brand).
Free meal #11. Giving away business news to Yahoo Finance and Google Finance (and something new that will get announced tomorrow).
Free meal #12. Giving away news ranking to Memeorandum.
Free meal #13. Giving away astrology to Astrology.com.
Free meal #14. Giving away comics to Comics.com.

What is their latest giveaway? Crowd-sourced news. I visit Twitter Search every day to find out what is “hot news.” That’s something I used to look at newspapers and older media for (radio, TV) but Twitter is just plain better at telling me what is trending.”

Scoble goes on to discuss what the newspapers haven’t given away yet, and that gives us lots of clues to which areas might produce a useful path for a website or blog wanting to stand out from the crowd.

You really need to read Scoble’s article.  But a few of his ideas are developing and displaying a deeper understanding of a local scene.  Also, focusing to the extent you have and present a much deeper understanding of a narrower topic.

Few in the world of Twitter, make the investment of time to understand in great depth, a particular subject they twitter on. Twitter requires speed.  Understanding in depth requires time and reflection.  It’s possible to do both.  Twitter with speed on many topics but also send out the occasional Tweet linked to a blog or website with a post about a topic which reflects your thinking and your brand, something you’re researched and thought about in depth. That, I think, is one successful way forward.  One where we citizen journalists and bloggers can bring a lot to the table.

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Wave Of The Future: Pizzeria Marketing Itself With Social Media

I was recently at a launch party for Blellow , chatting with Robert Scoble about his joining Rackspace and working with small business on more ways to use social media.  One of the ways he mentioned was having a restaurant employee at the entrance, Twittering about what the restaurant was serving up today, what the specials were, who was passing through the door.

And so I was happy to see the following story to know that this was already being done successfully.

According to Teresa Garcia in South Bay pizzeria marketing itself with social media :
A South Bay business has now found an innovative way to use the hottest trend in social networking to help keep the business growing.

The Pizza Party parlor in Santa Clara has been spinning pizza pies in one shape or another since 1962.

“We have so many different varieties,” said co-owner Bear Silber, who joined the restaurant in the last six months, but is already diving head in to modernize this nearly half century old business.

“You can find us on Facebook; we’re on Twitter,” said Silber.

This is a sign of the next generation of marketing.

“I’m young. I’m only 26, and I use the Internet everyday anyways,” said Silber.

Silber swears by using online social networking tools, like Twitter and Facebook, as a fresh, free, and fast way to market his small business.

“Immediately when I have an idea, I can tweet it,” said Silber.

Pizza Party already has more than 1,000 followers on Twitter and Silber sends them instant messages about different meal deals and other incentives to come in.

“On Super Bowl Sunday, whoever came in wearing their team’s jersey got free pizza,” said Silber. “Sharks games, same thing,. I’ll do the same thing. I’ll put those out on my Twitter.”.

It has become a marketing and advertising tool that is beginning to help increase business, especially critical during this rocky economy.

Silber says social media can be useful for many types of businesses. The challenge is to think, and act, outside-the-box.

“Especially within the traditional mom and pop pizza parlor, they’re so used to Yellow Page ads, doorbell hangers. These old, old marketing things that in my mind aren’t successful,” said Silber.

But it’s not just Twitter and Facebook that has catapulted Pizza Party into the 21st century. Silber has even developed a way for customers to connect by iPhone.

“We actually have an icon here. It’s its own app. It’s an iPhone app,” said Silber.

And if you really want to feel connected with your pizza, visit www.pizzapartyonline.comfrom a computer or a mobile phone, and you can watch your pizza being made live on three different cameras. Now that is one modern way to get your customers drooling.

For more information:

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