I don't read many blogs anymore. I don't know that I consider myself a blogger - or that I ever was - but today, for reasons unknown, I went out and checked out a few of the sites I used to read religiously.
Something about the distance from the blogging world has helped me to understand it a little better. It's similar to how I understood (and learned to appreciate) the United States by going and living in a couple other countries in my late teens and early twenties.
Today, one of my stops was Scoble's site.
I read a posted titled Why Scoble didn't get a Zune sponsorship.
And you know what? It was just a bunch of whining. Here's the first paragraph:
Oh, now I understand why Microsoft didn’t offer the ScobleShow a Zune sponsorship! Andrew Baron reveals that he was offered such but turned it down because the terms said he wouldn’t be able to say anything disparaging about Microsoft or the Zune. Since I’ve already done both, that leaves me out of the running explicitly.
Lame.
While I would rather see a world in which the Zune team gave out a few devices to people without requiring that they only say positive things about them, I would also rather see a world in which people didn't moan about not getting a device because of restrictive terms and conditions.
Seriously, Robert. The Zune team has some rules that they've set up, and while I agree with your objection, and while I'm assuming your reason for posting your objection is to try and change the way the Zune team operates, it's really an irritating, poor-me way of putting it.
C'mon. At the end of the day, you've got money - you've got your BMW - you've got all that VC money you talk about in your videos - you've got the fancy video camera that you purchased with that VC money - you've got money, money, money.
If you want to be able to use a Zune and say whatever you'd like about it, then you ought to just buy one. If your goal is to get your hands on one just so that you can publicly disparage it, then use your own money.
The Zune team already gave you something - they gave you free content. You took that content and turned it into a video on your site, which translates into viewers, which translates into ad revenue, which translates into your job and income. They don't owe you a device on top of it, and especially not if your plan is to talk trash about it.
Yeah, yeah, I know you're ultimately a good guy, and you'd say good things about the device, and you'd really only say negative things about the Zune because you'd like to see it succeed, but...
...who do you think you are?
At the end of the day, like the rest of us, you're someone who has made a splash in a very small, very vertical pond. While everybody in the convention center might know who you are, the baristas in the Starbucks across the street almost certainly don't. They're just as likely to spit in your latte as they are mine.
When you have a bit more weight to throw around, and when you're shaking hands with people outside our vertical, and when you're gracing the cover of Time, then you might be in a position to throw a prima Donna tantrum about not getting a free Zune, but as things are, you probably ought to just stick to being the nice guy that we know (and hope) you to be rather than someone who wants to take his free content from a team, his free device from a team, and then publicly pull their pants down.
And, you aren't going to make a lot of friends around here with comments like this:
Microsoft, I guess, still hasn’t discovered what’s magical about blogs: they let a big company listen in on the word-of-mouth conversation in a way that no one was able to before.
After having worked here, how can you say this? You should know by now that there isn't one Microsoft. You've said it yourself in so many words: Microsoft is a collection of some 70,000 people, each having his or her own idea about how this company is or should be run.
You should know better than to slam the whole lot of us just because one team didn't give you the device you wanted.
You're losing touch, yo.