By Jim Connolly
Robert Scoble has achieved something stunning, I mean REALLY stunning!
Before I continue, here’s a quick introduction for those of you who don’t already know who Robert Scoble is. Also known as the Scobleizer or just plain Scoble, Robert Scoble is a one man content machine; producing stacks of articles, video, pictures and traditional blog-posts. His wiki can be found here.
So what?
Unlike many bloggers, Scoble has hundreds of thousands (perhaps more) of followers worldwide. On Twitter alone he has over 23,000 followers and his blog gets the kind of viewing numbers that many big companies would love. Unlike some people with large followings, Scoble invests stacks of time actually chatting or speaking with his followers. As a result, he has developed a unique relationship with them and their numbers have grown massively. This unique relationship, coupled with his ferocious appetite for delivering content, has created what I call ‘The Scoble Effect.’
International impact of The Scoble Effect
Robert Scoble’s work is based on two-way communication, which means there are always people messaging him, commenting on his blogs or chatting with him. When the recent Chinese earthquake disaster happened, Robert’s international reach meant he heard about AND reported on the tragedy, before the traditional media outlets could even get a ‘breaking news’ story out.
His Tweets about the disaster then became a news story in itself - reported on by none other than the world’s largest news gathering organization; The BBC - click here to read the BBC’s post about Scoble.
So, what is ‘The Scoble Effect?’
The formula goes something like this:
Followers + Trust = Direction
Because the people who FOLLOW Scoble’s work, TRUST his recommendations and suggestions, they are happy to allow him to DIRECT them to an interesting website, blog, event, piece of software or hardware. They know that there’s a good chance that what he’s suggesting is, at least worth considering a look at. For example, it was Scoble that introduced me to Twitter and helped me decide which blogging platform to use for this blog!
First hand experience of The Scoble Effect
I experienced ‘The Scoble Effect‘ for myself yesterday evening, when Robert happened to mention an article I wrote about Leo Laporte, while we were chatting. Within 20 minutes of him ‘Tweeting’ my story on Twitter - this blog (which only launched officially today) received over a thousand page views - with thousands more views over the next 24 hours! Because his work is based on technology reporting, Scoble’s followers are not a random selection of people - but a group of intelligent, tech enthusiasts who are interested in his articles, posts, ideas and suggestions.
Human generated
Scoble’s ability to direct a massive, targeted group of people around the Internet is incredibly powerful; because it’s HUMAN GENERATED! It’s not Digg or stumbleupon or delicious or a search engine - It’s just a guy with a camera-phone and an Internet connection - that’s what’s so amazing about The Scoble Effect.
Love him or hate him (and there’s a few in the latter group too) you have to admit that what he is achieving is remarkable.
* * * * UPDATE: Scoble has now been given HIS OWN SHOW on the Revision3 network
- click here to find out all about it!
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Excellent post, Scoble is a one man internet phenomenon.
microsoft should ditch yahoo and buy Scoble. i bet he gets more traffic than calacanis and mahalo!!!!
Microsoft to acquire Scoble? Now, that would get the blogosphere going!