Scoble Gone Wild

Robert Scoble did an interesting tour of Intel’s new fab plant yesterday, he thought so much of this video that he is beside himself on the number of sites that didn’t post it. Robert thought that this video was so important to be linked that he admits to comment spamming in an attempt to have major sites link to it!

I really don’t understand what’s going on here, increasing traffic to his site doesn’t increase any revenue for him (his blog has no text ads on it), he’s already a well known and influential blogger. Who cares of Engadget and Gizmodo isn’t linking your stuff? Maybe it’s because PodTech.net is a /direct/ competitor? Furthermore, I wouldn’t consider Engadget nor Gizmodo to be a “blog” really. They’re both too large and commercial oriented to have the feel of a personal blog.

Scoble does air a concern that the era of linking to each other is over. However, he does not provide any hard evidence for this assertion. I think it would be an interesting experiment to examine some of the bigger blogs in Technorati say, and see who they link to and how often.

I don’t think the problem is a lack of linkage, I think the real problem is bloggers producing unique content. Most blogger’s are more concerned with getting listed on digg, they regurgitate some other site’s story with a little flair added in, and hope they can get on the front page. If you want the link, break the story or produce the content! And if you’re so big that you’re competing with other sites, don’t be surprised if they don’t link to you out of habit!

I’ll just chalk up Robert’s rant to us hitting the most depressing time of year. I still love you man! blogger man-huggers