In concert with yesterday’s entry, in which I talked about the IMDb, today I’m going to talk about a really neat guy named Robert Scoble.
Robert first came to my attention when he worked for Microsoft. He was one of the first employees there to blog seriously, and he blogged a lot. Some of his posts even criticized Microsoft policies. He came across as honest and matter-of-fact. He did one of the best things you can do when blogging: he put himself into his blog.
He then left Microsoft so he could freelance. That’s when things got interesting. He began joining social networks; now he’s on just about every single one. He blogs, he twitters, he Qiks, he comments on Friendfeed. It’s like you can’t get away from him.
And that’s the neat thing about him. He tries out all these services, and not just as a casual experiment. He integrates them into his daily life, and decides what works for him and doesn’t. Then he blogs about his experiences.
Meanwhile, his personal network grows. He’s subscribed to 28,000 people on Twitter alone. He wrote recently about how he loves the noise, meaning that he derives personal satisfaction out of sifting through metric tons of seemingly irrelevant comments to see what people are really thinking about. And he engages constantly in those comments; he’s posted 2,200 comments just on Friendfeed.
He’s terrifically popular, and makes money through his interviews and videos, which he gets from tapping his social network.
Really neat to see a guy making a living off of his passions and interests.