Seems that I’ve missed a good chunk of mudslinging in the Blogging world over the weekend… guess it’s because I try to go “analog” over the weekends. And yeah, while the 360 is hardly analog, at least I’m not tied to an RSS reader *g*

Who wins when two A-list bloggers fling mud at each other? I do. It’s fun being way back in the cheap seats.

On one side you’ve got Robert Scoble, formerly of Microsoft. While at MS he did quite a lot for the company in the blogging community, particularly for Channel 9. He’s since gone off to work on a start up, more power to him.

On the other side is Dare Obasanjo who is just as active in blogging, but more for the developer audience than the mass market. He also wrote RSS Bandit, one of the more popular RSS readers – it’s been around almost since the “beginning” of aggregations, actually. He’s also part of the Windows Live team at Microsoft.

The argument? Scoble questioned the number of blogs and/or subscribers on Windows Live. Robert is of the opinion that if a blog is marked as “private” that it shouldn’t be included, since it’s not a blog. He also says that a blog with one post for six months isn’t a blog. Obviously Dare disagrees. The argument has since run at high speeds from that specific point and now has Robert proclaiming that he will define what is and is not a blog.

My take? I have two different points to point out. Well three, if you consider the obvious: “who gives a shit?” There’s an awful lot of bits being wasted on this already, but it’s blogging, so I guess it’s a low cost of time and energy. Why else would I chime in on it!

Point two: who’s right? It depends on if you want number of blogs or number of subscribers. I mean AOL used to go on and on about its millions of subscribers… does anyone know how they were counted? If someone subscribed and then discontinued the account, did they pull that number off the “subscribers” list? Since I was on Q-Link, was I still listed as a subscriber? I don’t think AOL aliases ever got freed up – does that make them a customer even if they stopped paying?

And more importantly should it matter? If Robert has issue with what a blog is or is not, and Windows Live claims members rather than blogs, is this a moot issue? Consider a company like MBNA: if you sign up for one of their credit cards and never use it, aren’t you still a customer? Yes, you are: the account shows on your credit statement and they send you mail. Sounds like the same thing as Windows Live no matter what state your blog is in. MySpace, the same thing. I have account there – I only have one to view other people’s blogs there. My own page on MySpace (and Spaces for that matter) simply point back to this blog, seeing as it’s over five years old now. Does that not make me MySpace subscriber?

Doesn’t seem to be much of an argument, does it?

But that brings us to point three… an uncomfortable one, honestly, since it’s something I don’t like to see. Scoble seems to be channeling Dave Winer and that’s a shame. I know you won’t know Dave – he wrote a spec for RSS and he thinks this now entitles him to the title of Digital God That No One Can Disagree With. I’ve mentioned him before, since his ego tends to need it’s own zip code. Same thing is happening here. I find that as soon as a person has to make a statement like “I’ve done this for so long, *I* will decide what is and is not real” you’ve jumped the shark – or tried to and you’re now bleeding in the water. Or you’re simply acting like an ass. Scoble makes this statement: And, OK, I’ll grant you that my ego is out of control. Blogging is something I’m a weeeeee bit of an expert on. Do you listen to anonymous jerks who come in your office and try to tell you what a good community is or what good software looks like? So, why do you quote such when trying to argue against me? Well yeah, if the anonymous jerk is making more sense, I’m going with the jerk. This is so very much like the RSS arguments that went around the blogging communities a while ago that it’s almost eerie… and sad, really.

Kinda like if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? If a blog is posted and has no readers, is it a blog? If it has no comments, to allow for interaction, is it a blog? When people were posting all of the About Me pages in the late 90’s and no one read them, did we tell them that they didn’t have a web site because of the visitor logs? Will someone get Robert’s “definition” of a blog and care? No. Sorry, Robert. Even if you think that you did “invent” blogging, inventions often take on a life of their own once in the wild. I agree with Maryam on this: you’re full of it. The best thing to do at this point is pretend it all never happened. I know you don’t want to hear it but you can’t argue with Dare on stuff like this: coders deal with 0’s and 1’s and are much harder to argue with, especially with things that are non-technical.

And yes, this is all a non-technical issue.

What’s worse is that I agree with Scoble’s point – it’s just not being argued properly, which is what costs him support… *sigh*

Kids today.