It seems like the big pre-SXSW bitchfest this past weekend was around whether anonymous commenters are good or bad, whether they are trolls and whether they are the scum of the earth and should be shot with a nerf gun until they give up who they really are. AOL tech blog Techcrunch switched from using the Y Combinated Disqus comments system over to using Facebook comments. Let me just say this as Allen not as anonymous commenter 2382389A, the move was made to get more traffic to Techcrunch. Period. (nothing wrong with wanting to make money)

Robert Scoble nearly died (I think his caps lock key got jammed too) after reading some post by Steve Cheney. There seems to be two main issues going on within the posts regarding Facebook comments and trolls stories:

1. Are anonymous comments bad or good
2. Should we be willing to let Facebook control how we use the Internet outside of the walls of Facebook.com (I will save this discussion for another day)

It seems whenever the discussion of “internet commenting trolls” comes up, I always get into an offline discussion about which came first on a blog – shitty content or the trolls? In most cases mice and rats don’t just show up – they come when you put food out there for them. The conversation usually ends up with everyone agreeing that the trolls show up when shitty content is placed out there for them.

There are three types of anonymous commenters from what I can tell:

• those who write comments that should absolutely be deleted and ignored – racist, sexist, etc.
• those who just want to pick a silly fight – for example, when a blogger writes an “apple is great i love steve jobs” posts and the Google fans come out to just cause a silly fight or vice-versa
• those who provide commentary about why the post was clearly wrong or why the post author was wrong in his or her research or conclusion – it is this type that I think will be lost with the Facebook comment change

With regards to the last type of commenter, it’s pretty interesting to watch how different bloggers internalize feedback from anonymous commenters. I’ve noticed that one of the Techcrunch writers has seemingly been trained to believe that there is no way in hell that an anonymous commenter could be right. All you need to do is watch her Twitter stream or her replies on posts where there are a lot of anonymous comments and it’s easy to see the training she’s received. And she’s not alone – there are many others with the same type of response.

Another good example points to the SXSW Zuckerberg interview from a few years ago. It bombed, people commented on Twitter and blogs – most of the people on Twitter weren’t anonymous and yet the interviewer still told everyone to “f-off”. As if there is no way in hell she did a bad job, no way.

The real issue I see is that many bloggers don’t want feedback – there is no freaking way someone commenting on my post can be right. There’s no way my grammar could be crappy – or my research wrong. Imagine if each blogger spent some time looking at their comments and then decided if perhaps I should change how I do research or try a new style. My fear is that a move to Facebook comments will mean more “you are great” and less “here’s why you are wrong” comments.

Feel free to leave an anonymous comment below :)

Find more stories about: Bloggers, Blogging, blogs, comments, Robert Scoble, TechCrunch

Microsoft briefly posted an Office 2010 technical preview site but quickly removed it as it appeared to be posted early in error. There’s still a Google cache of the site which you can review.

Here’s the overview of the Office 2010 Web Applications version:

Office Web Applications, the online companion to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote applications, allow you to access documents from anywhere. You can even simultaneously share and work on documents with others online. View documents across PCs, mobile phones, and the Web without compromising document fidelity. Create new documents and do basic editing using the familiar Office interface. By offering more ways to access files from almost anywhere, Office Web Applications enable you to get things done according to your schedule.

The Microsoft employee in the video, Monica Mendoza, is very lucky it seems – first she was able to go work in Europe then take a trip to Las Vegas. If the video doesn’t work below – click here to view it.

After talking to a few of my friends who use Google Docs heavily, they say the demo video and images make Office 2010 look much more powerful. We’ve covered online office provider Zoho many times on CN – it will be interesting to get their take on the Office 2010 release.

I can only guess this is what Robert Scoble was very excited about on Friendfeed last week but said he was embargoed until today.

Find more stories about: Microsoft, Office, online video, realtime, Robert Scoble, Video, videos

Last week I wrote about the default list of users that Twitter has selected for both new and current users to pick from (or select all). One of the questions I posed to the FriendFeed community was if Twitter was making a mistake by pimping the celebs and others who will pimp Twitter instead of giving the boost to the users who got the engines going and helped get Twitter on the track to where the service is today in terms of users and usage.

This afternoon early adopter Robert Scoble posted a message on FriendFeed asking if a kitten would die if he deleted his Twitter account. The second part of his question was a comment noting, "I’m wondering cause more and more of my early adopter friends are moving to other services (I am watching)." Interestingly enough, Robert says his early adopter friends are moving back to Facebook.

Early adopters tend to move from service to service and, in many cases, help build the service to a level that helps build momentum. From simple feedback to very involved testing, the group helps typically for no pay and for the good of the industry. While there are parts of the early adopter set that frustrate me, overall they are a very important piece to building a Web 2.0/social networking business.

What should early adopters expect when helping to build a new service? Is it reasonable to expect things like being pimped over users who just joined the service? Or do early adopters know their role and are content enough to just know that they helped get the service to a strong foundation?

Find more stories about: Quick News, Robert Scoble, social media, Social Networking

What’s going on in the news/daily show videoblogging space? Check out this list of activity over the last couple of months:

• CBS’ Wallstrip closes
• Mobuzz closes
• CBS’ Moblogic closes
• Leah D’Emilio leaves Mahalo Daily; apparently show reduced to 1x/week Youtube recap
• WebbAlert closes
• Scoble leaves FastCompanyTV

I’ve heard a lot of chatter that daily news review shows are having trouble growing their audiences because the news is typically always a day behind. In today’s "real time" required market, it makes sense that people aren’t interested in checking out the news they already read on a blog the day before. Yet some of the shows listed above are interview and segment shows, not daily video shows and they have also closed up shop.

I’ve also noticed several videobloggers willing to shill for any company that will pay. While overall online advertising is down, video advertising is supposed to be the one area of growth. I assume that most advertisers would rather spend their money on Hulu than on a small daily video show.

Are there any daily news/interview online video shows that are able to consistently generate a large audience and/or revenue?

Find more stories about: Fast Company TV, MobLogic, online video, Quick News, Robert Scoble, Wallstrip

When I left home for the first time, mother told me to get a kit together in case of an emergency. A flashlight, small amount of cash, bandages, a couple cans of food, batteries, water, etc. Thankfully I’ve never had to use the kit to-date.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve learned that there’s a new kit on the market that is way more important than any kit previously offered for an emergency. This new kit appears to be named the, "Scoble Emergency Preparedness Kit".

As you can imagine, sites like Twitter and FriendFeed have taken over the way the Web works. Fast Company videoblogger Robert Scoble calls this movement the "realtime web" and apparently it will be the end to all other forms of emergency reporting. While I can’t be sure, it seems like the more people that use this kit, the more likely we are to prevent anything bad from happening anywhere in the world.

Item #1 – Twitter account

Goes without saying but you must have a Twitter account enabled and verified. It’s important to follow and be followed by the Scobleizer account. This is important because in the event of an emergency you can get your news directly to Scoble who will get it out to all Twitters worldwide.

Item #2 – Friendfeed account

This is almost as important as item #1. You want to create an account on Friendfeed, and be on the ready. The moment an emergency hits, you are absolutely to create a room to discuss the emergency and use it as a base of operations. You should also announce the room on both Friendfeed and Twitter. Learn from Scoble’s mistake with regards to US Airways Flight #1549 so you are ready should the need arise.

Item #3 – Smart Phone With Highspeed Mobile Access

It’s important that you get your news, photos and videos into the appropriate units of the realtime web. To do this, you will need a smart phone with a good highspeed mobile plan. The best phone is clearly the Palm Pre for this type of usage but for now you can go with a Nokia N95 or a Samsung Ace. My suggestion is to get more than one battery so when you are out using the phone to document, you will never run out of time. Verify that you can post to items #1 and #2 from your mobile as quickly as possible. Don’t worry if everyone uses your photos and videos without credit or payment – in the real-time web, scraping is welcomed!

Item #4 – Group Twitter Tool

You will want to get a group Twitter tool like CrowdStatus or Tweetdeck. The key here is to watch all of the other Twitter users who are in your emergency group (I am group #10813B) and then as tweets come in related to the emergency, you can retweet them out. The more retweets you can do, the better. And it’s completely ok to retweet a retweet – we call that reretweet.

From what we understand the kit is currently available worldwide. You must have all of the items to make the kit complete. Ordering is, of course, via the Twitter payment system.

The company behind the kit is looking for feedback on items to add for version 2 launching this spring. Leave your thoughts about future additions in the comments as the company is watching for feedback.

Find more stories about: CrowdStatus, FriendFeed, Quick News, Robert Scoble, Twitter

Edelman VP Steve Rubel wrote a post yesterday where he discussed why text is still the "king" of the Web. The article is worth reading because the points Rubel makes are solid. He says text is scannable, you can SEO the heck out of text, easier for workers to slack off reading text vs. video, easier for mobile access and lastly, text is easier to share versus video.

Rubel also discusses blogger Robert Scoble’s disappointment that his videos don’t show up on Techmeme but his text posts do. Scoble went on to say that his videos typically don’t generate a lot of inbound links or conversations on the new crop of chat services. I took a look at why Scoble’s videos might not generate the same attention as his text posts.

This week he’s posted some good articles about how to find a job. But the question is, why don’t his videos get the same attention as his text posts. I’ve posted 400+ videos and typically find similar results. When I post demo videos from a meetup, they don’t get many views. When I post interviews, they typically do better but rarely "awesome" in terms of traffic or discussion. However my videos where I am in the video itself discussing a subject do very well. It’s typically hard to make an interview or demo that exciting – but I feel they are important so I continue to provide the content.

In Robert’s case, part of the issue is brand fragmentation. Robert works for FastCompany magazine and runs the FastCompany.tv online video section yet he posts many videos on his own blog. I imagine that his FC audience is a bit different than his blog audience and perhaps the blog audience isn’t interested in his discussions with various CEOs and other technology executives. By linking to the video content, readers would also have a chance to engage with additional content on the FC video site.

In looking at the FastCompany.tv site, a slight rework might be in order. There are three main sections of video content on the site: ScobleizerTV, WorkFastTV and FastCompanyLive. WorkFastTV hasn’t been updated since October and FastCompanyLive hasn’t been updated in a month. Yet all of this fresh material only lives on his blog. I just don’t understand why FC allows this pattern to continue. It makes the FC site appear stale when there’s no reason for it. If the WorkFast is no longer being produced, move it off to the right so it’s not the first thing viewers see when loading the site.

From a technical standpoint, there are a variety of changes they could make to the Drupal installation to help with better site optimization which I think would also help in increasing discussion, linking and overall traffic. I also think the site could be improved to make the experience a bit warmer – remember, with text it’s quick-in, quick-out. With video, you are going to sit on the page for a longer time, make the experience something that makes the user want to hang around.

My suggestion would be to keep all videos on FastCompany.tv and point to them from Scoble’s blog. From my perspective it feels like an overall video strategy would help Robert get his video views up and also increase the amount of discussion that takes place around the videos. The strategy will help to reduce the brand fragmentation and increase the views because readers and viewers will know where to look for videos.

While I typically try to stay away from discussing an individual, in this case I think this discussion can benefit anyone trying to run multiple sites with video and text.

Find more stories about: Fast Company TV, online video, Quick News, Robert Scoble, rubel

Update: I was able to catchup with Gary Vaynerchuk from Wine Library TV and asked him about the move today. He said, “I love REV3 and the people there and sometimes you need to adjust to the market and see what works and doesn’t and I love those guys and wish all of them super well and hope they Kill it and do nothing but awesome things! As for Wine Library Tv I will continue to Crush it on winelibrarytv.com everyday!”

Update 2: On the TWIT podcast last night, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis said regarding the staff size at Revision3, “30 (staff) is kind of high for that kind of company.”

Revision3 has announced some major show changes today. Epic-Fu will no longer be carried by Revision3 at the end of December and the Wine Library TV show will be removed as of today. Several other shows have also been cut. CEO Jim Louderback also noted that they are working on a variety of new shows that may hit the lineup soon. Wine Library TV joined the lineup back in June with a slimmed down version of their daily show. Louderback notes the huge popularity of Diggnation as one of their “winners”.

Mashable is also reporting that some staff members at Revision3 were fired today including their head of business development Damon Berger. It’s important to note that we will never know the real reason for these people being let go.

In other online video news, Robert Scoble has announced that he is “restructuring” his WorkFastTV show which is broadcast live from the Revision3 offices. No further details have been provided about this restructuring. I think the show has made some good overall progress since I provided my initial commentary and suggestions for improvement this summer. I’d like to see them make the site a bit more friendly. Remember that with video you could be sitting on the site for quite a while, make the appearance relaxing and engaging.

Find more stories about: Fast Company, Fast Company TV, Gary Vaynerchuk, online advertising, online video, Quick News, Robert Scoble

Have you considered a career working with Robert Scoble? Are you having sleepless nights wondering what it would be like to work at Fast Company TV with the master of FriendFeed Robert Scoble? Well then, have I got the job for you! Here are the job details from Director of Social Media Lynne Johnson:

Looking for a senior or executive level editor passionate about the intersection of social media and journalism.

The ideal candidate will be able to jump start conversations in our community. The person will work closely with the president of Mansueto Digital Edward Sussman, Lynne D. Johnson (FC Director of Social Media), Robert Scoble, our managing director of FastCompany.TV, and the print team of Fast Company magazine.

The job is fun and high profile and right on the edge of what’s happening in publishing. We are looking for someone who can spit out loads of story ideas about innovation, the web, social media, sustainability, and other core FC topics — and then make them a reality.

Contact email: lynne@fastcompany.com

To be honest, it looks like a pretty strong social media opportunity. Their office has one of the best views of lower Manhattan out there!

Find more stories about: Fast Company, Fast Company TV, jobs, NYC, Quick News, Robert Scoble

Last month we wrote about the "FriendFeed 9" which were the 9 defaults that FriendFeed offers to each new account. FriendFeed founder Paul Buchheit says that only a few people actually see this default list because most new accounts are referred from someone else which eliminates this default list all together. I am not sure I agree with that – when the early adopter blogs posted about the new beta last week, how many new signups did FriendFeed see via direct links – I will bet that it’s most of them. In fact, the number must be great to the default list because default user Scoble noted yesterday that he can tell when FriendFeed is doing well in terms of user growth simply by how many new subs he gets via the default option.

With the launch of the new beta this week, I thought it was a perfect time to take a look and see where the FriendFeed 9 are now and whether they made any changes to the structure. The FriendFeed 9 is now the FriendFeed 24 – that’s the only change that has been made. The list is completely popularity based, not activity/usage based. This type of popularity list means that the 24 selected individuals will always appear on the list.

This is a very poor way to pimp people – it shows that FriendFeed doesn’t give two knishes about their loyal and active users. This is pretty clear because the most active FriendFeed user Mona (her blog) isn’t even on the list.

Here’s my video on the subject:

Robert Scoble says he wants off the list and in Louis Gray’s post today about the new FriendFeed he discusses this popularity list. He notes, "22 of those users were men, 22 were white and there were two Asian (one male, one female)".

All these popularity lists do is keep the top on top (without any quality backing) and never allow for any user/content discovery. I hope that FriendFeed will look into changing their default policy in the near future. I wrote this post and video because I think every startup should consider the lessons learned here for their own projects.

Find more stories about: FriendFeed, Quick News, Robert Scoble, Social Networking

Over the past 24 hours, Jason Calacanis, Robert Scoble, Loic Lemeur and Michael Arrington have all asked essentially the same question. They are all wondering how they got so many followers on FriendFeed so quickly.

Here at the CenterNetworks Investigation Bureau, we have been investigating this topic since we first reported on it a month ago. Seriously. After the last month of investigation, we are now prepared to share our findings. Please view the video below for the analysis as to why these four people are getting so many followers so quickly. The answer might just surprise you.

So as you can see, FriendFeed has created "defaults" and the four people above are part of the nine-person default set. What this means is that when anyone signs up for a new account on FriendFeed, they are presented with the same nine people every single time. Twitter has no defaults, hence a slower signup rate.

I presented my research to a couple of other top bloggers last week who aren’t included in the default list and their initial response was that Jason and Mike weren’t even participating in FF (they are now which is great). Mack also misses the point when he tries to explain the follower numbers.

Update: two people have emailed me noting that Jason isn’t actively participating, just sharing Mahalo links. They make a good point, he’s only sharing links via the bookmarklet, not actually participating in the conversation (yet I hope).

Defaults don’t just mean more followers, they mean more traffic to the supporting content sites.

When I asked Friendfeed co-founder Paul Buchheit about this, he said, "you are correct however that we should tweak the algorithm to increase diversity when browsing popular feeds such as Scoble’s — FriendFeed has grown by a few orders of magnitude since the algorithm was originally created and so it probably requires some updating." When I spoke with Paul, I hadn’t yet realized that there was this also default nine-person set.

My hope is that FriendFeed will expedite the algorithm change and create more diversity and discovery with their platform. Shouldn’t everyone who uses FriendFeed get a chance to be discovered instead of pushing the same nine people for all of eternity?

Find more stories about: FriendFeed, Insights, Michael Arrington, Robert Scoble, TechCrunch, Twitter

There are times when "going live" is great. When there’s an earthquake or other catastrophy, it’s great. When you want to show gramma how your baby crawls on the floor while speaking with her on the phone, great. Other times, it’s not needed and can become more of an annoyance than anything.

Yesterday I sat in on a panel discussion at the Personal Democracy Conference in NYC. The panel was moderated by Esther Dyson and included the CEOs from CoverItLive, Qik, Mogulus and also Robert Scoble. Side note, if anyone would like me to post the full session video, I can. I didn’t find the session to be as strong as the talk Robert gave at MediaBistro last month.

Here’s a photo from the event. I’ve left out Esther who really didn’t say much for the entire panel except something at the end about oil prices and how Barack is going to fix the world. From the left: the CoverItLive CEO had no electronics on the stage and seemed to be the most involved in the discussion. Next to him is the Mogulus CEO who had a Macbook with a webcam apparently live and he moved the laptop all around during the panel. Next to him is the Qik CEO who had out his Nokia N95 and for most of the panel held up this camera so he could allow all of the Qik folks access to watch the panel. Last we have Robert Scoble who also had a Nokia N95 hooked up to Qik and his massive battery pack. In addition he had a Macbook Pro attached to the projector.

Every 2-3 seconds Robert was clicking on something and I found it to be very distracting. Speaking with a few other attendees, they said the same thing. Is it really necessary to watch Twitter, FriendFeed, Summize, Qik, Twittervision over and over every few seconds? If attendees want to monitor the activities, they can do it on their own devices.

This panel is only one example of this type of behavior. I’ve been seeing more and more of this and it’s disturbing. There’s absolutely no reason this panel had to be broadcast live. In fact, most conferences don’t need to be broadcast live. The sessions should absolutely be recorded but don’t need to be broadcast live.

In yesterday’s case, moderator Esther Dyson mentioned that attendees could text their questions in through Twitter. Great idea, but poor execution. Instead of having one of the panelists (scoble) monitoring for questions, let him actually be part of the panel and find an intern to monitor the backchannel for questions. It just takes away from the overall panel.

Another question regarding live conference broadcasting is: when will the conference organizers put a stop to the live broadcasts? If I can sit in my office and watch the conference, why spend the $2,000 to attend? Will DEMO and Techcrunch50 allow live broadcasting? What I can see is a PPV option where the conference provides the live streaming and charges a fee for it.

When I spend thousands of dollars and my time to attend a conference, I am really not interested in watching the Qik CEO broadcast the session live to everyone without paying attention to what’s going on in the moment. I also really don’t give a rats ass what people outside the conference think of what’s going on inside the room. I want to have the speaker’s full attention. I didn’t have that today – not by a longshot. And again, I am using this session as an example but the issue is much more widespread.

Let’s get back to why we go to conferences… the networking and the education. If you can’t be there for some reason, watch the sessions later on. Just because it’s cutsie and hip to go live all the time, doesn’t mean we need to.

Find more stories about: Conferences, Insights, Robert Scoble

Out today is a new network of sites that use a scoring model and a social network. The name of the network is Loud3r (I guess pronounced Louder?) and is a collection of sites (currently 25 with a goal to launch over 500) including sites about dogs, cats, Web 2.0, celebrities, cars, etc. Each content type has its own "3R" site. For example, Found3r = venture capital, News3r = tech news, Putt3r = golf. It’s important to note that this Loud3r network is a content aggregation network and not a user-generated content network.

The sites have a half-completed design and feel very unpolished. If you are going to compete with Original Signal, Alltop and popURLs, you best be bringing the big guns. Another issue I notice is that the site doesn’t share cookies – so each site in the network I visit, I have to login. They really need to fix that – getting users to hop from one 3R to another 3R is crucial for discovery and potentially long-term success. They do have a nice batch of widgets.

One really positive thing is that they are bringing this type of scored content to new verticals. I am glad they stayed away from voting. If you are looking for a new place to find content about topics you are interested in, the the Loud3r network might be for you. I think for the site to really takeoff, they will need to make sure their social network has enough people to get users to come back. If people just take their feeds, the sites won’t work financially.

Louis Gray has an indepth and very positive review of the network. Kristin Nicole calls the network a popURLs competitor, I don’t see that – if anything it’s an Original Signal competitor.

They did do one thing right – they signed on bigtime blogger Robert Scoble – his 3R site is located at Scobleiz3r. It’s stories all about Robert. I did notice that the share button has no FriendFeed option – how could Robert approve this?!?! It does look like the majority of content on Scobleiz3r is coming from FriendFeed and/or Twitter.

I am also guessing that other ego-driven sites will be coming soon and should help the overall network to gain popularity.

Find more stories about: Loud3r, Reviews, Robert Scoble, Social Networking

Blogger Robert Scoble noted in a conversation with me on FriendFeed this afternoon the following, "Allen even if I were paid by Page Views I would be totally supporting FF. My traffic to my blog has gone way up since I have been active here. I am way higher on TechMeme’s leader board too. – Robert Scoble"

In the picture on the left, you can see Robert is looking for something. My guess is that he’s looking for the reason why his traffic has gone up since he has become active on FriendFeed. I’ve created a short video to explain the most likely reason why his traffic is up based on FriendFeed.

Find more stories about: FriendFeed, Quick News, Robert Scoble

Earlier this week, Jason Calacanis pimped Loic’s LeWeb conference. Loic was then required to "re-pimp" within 48 hours – he chose Techcrunch50 by asking Jason about why he wants to kill Demo and why Techcrunch50 is a better model.

Robert Scoble has decided that not only will he jump on the "kill Demo" bandwagon but now he is going to kill Techcrunch50 as well. This move came out of left field!

Scoble says that startups should come to him on FastCompany.tv for no cost and that you can watch for no cost. Both conferences charge several thousand dollars to attend. He believes FastCompany.tv beats them both by providing more viewers and also a longer interview and discussion time (both Demo and TC50 offer ~6 minutes on stage).

What Scoble misses is that it’s not about the two/three-day infomercials, it’s about the networking, the hallway discussions and the business card swaps. I am not sure his TV station can provide this. But he does make one point well – startups should try to get as much coverage as they can.

Update #1 – Scoble says via a Techcrunch post that he doesn’t want to kill TC50 (never mentions demo), only to say, “I know the truth: that we’re both laughing all the way to the bank.”.

Update #2 – per the FriendFeed contract, there’s now a thread regarding the below video on FF

Here’s Scoble’s pitch:

Find more stories about: DEMO, Insights, Robert Scoble, TechCrunch, Techcrunch40

Today at the Mediabistro Circus event in NYC, popular technology blogger Robert Scoble spoke on the topic of the “Worldwide Talk Show”. I captured his entire discussion (~15 minutes) and it’s worth watching.

Robert began by speaking about the earthquake in China and he claimed he was the absolute first one in the U.S. to know about it first one to share the story inside the U.S. (somehow I doubt that!). He showed the crowd all of the apps he uses to monitor the news.

He talked about dotSub and their video translation offering, pimps Seesmic, Gary Vaynerchuk, Leo Laporte and Chris Pirillo.

Lastly, he announced (after I turned off the recording) that he has partnered with Revision3 on a new show. I don’t have any other details as of yet but the name sounded like it had the word “cash” in it.

Update: Liz Gannes got confirmation on the new show. The name is “WorkFast.tv”.

Find more stories about: Conferences, NYC, online video, Robert Scoble