Daily Archives: June 11, 2006

The Internet Open = news at the speed of enthusiasm

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The French Open ended moments ago, and already the Wikipedia biography of winner  Rafael Nadal – aka "Raffy Boy" for those of us who don't know him – has been revised to reflect the win against Roger Federer.

This news items, like the big tech news items of today Scoble leaves microsoft which was accurately posted extensively at many blogs before conventional news outlets could even have hoped to find out, strongly indicates that the internet has the potential to react to breaking news more quickly, more accurately, and perhaps most importantly, *VERY CHEAPLY*.    Millions of potential reporters are out there, enthusiastically posting blog items or revising websites in response to what interests them.
Can all that info and energy come together in BBC style global network fashion?   Certainly it has not happened yet and BBC remains the best global news distribution network by far.  However it should not take long for news mashups to leverage the millions of online reporters who daily post tens of millions of online reports into a simply spectacular news resource.  

Although it may be too far ahead of it's time to succeed, I sure like like Newsvine, which I think gives us a good glimpse of the future of news, which dovetails nicely with the future of the internet, which dovetails nicely with … our future.

Scoble leaves Microsoft!

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Robert Scoble, one of the world's most influential and well-known bloggers, is leaving Microsoft for startup podtech.net

It's not official until he announces it tomorrow at Vloggercon.com, but in typical blogOsphere fashion the news is out before it is news.    Looks like Robert notified a few folks who called a few others who posted about it and it'll be old news by the time he announces tomorrow.

I had a chance to talk briefly with Robert at the MIX06 conference and he's a great guy.  I'm very surprised that Microsoft allowed this to happen though I'm guessing it's because the corporate structure made it hard to reward him appropriately for his enormous contributions to Microsoft as one of their most prominent online spokespeople.    Also I'm guessing he was frustrated by the slow pace of change at MS. As such a well-connected guy I bet he wanted to jump into the excitement of Web 2.0.  Microsoft is missing much of the point of Web 2.0 as many have noted – in fact it they aren't careful Web 2.0 could kill Microsoft, and Scoble's departure is notable in that respect.   He was Mr 2.0 at Microsoft and now he's gone.

Microsoft's loss is Podtech's gain and I'll look forward to seeing Robert more often now that he's heading to Silicon Valley.