Robert Scoble
Robert Scoble
Robert Scobleis an American blogger, technical evangelist, and author. Scoble is best known for his blog, Scobleizer, which came to prominence during his tenure as a technology evangelist at Microsoft. He later worked for Fast Company as a video blogger, and then Rackspace and the Rackspace sponsored community site Building 43 promoting breakthrough technology and startups. He currently works for Upload VR — a new media site covering virtual and augmented reality — as its entrepreneur in residence, where he develops new shows,...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth18 January 1965
CountryUnited States of America
Apple knows a lot of data. Facebook knows a lot of data. Amazon knows a lot of data. Microsoft used to, and still does with some people, but in the newer world, Microsoft knows less and less about me. Xbox still knows a lot about people who play games. But those are the big five, I guess.
It's not enough to have a hacker culture anymore. You have to have a design culture, too.
What's really going on is, on your iPhone, you have 200 apps, and they're all collecting a little data on you. Twitter knows a certain thing, Foursquare knows something else, my Fitbit app knows something else, my Waze app knows something else.
I happen to be fortunate: I live in San Francisco, and I can afford a $600 phone. Or two of them!
I have been talking to lots of people today, though, inside and outside of Microsoft. In every instance, they asked me to keep those conversations confidential. Why? Cause we're talking about international relations here--and the lives of employees.
I find that it's not the numbers but the quality of the audience. That's why it got to be such a big thing when I left Microsoft, because I had an interested audience; not huge, but passionate. The passionate ones are the ones who change society.
Turn on all security features like two-factor authentication. People who do that generally don't get hacked. Don't care? You will when you get hacked. Do the same for your email and other social services, too.
Be the authority on your product/company. You should know more about your product than anyone else alive if you're writing a blog about it.
Facebook is teachable. If you hide items, you'll see fewer of those kinds of items in the future. Like more items, and you'll see more of those in the future.
Facebook is looking to help you distribute content to who you want to distribute to. Facebook gets a lot better if you put each of your friends into either your 'close friend' or 'acquaintance' list.
Everything you do on Facebook will affect what comes in your view in the future. If you like crappy things that you don't care about, you'll see more crappy brands that you don't care about in the future, and it might even affect your experiences when you walk into bars, churches, schools, shopping malls, etc.
At Rackspace, I'm building a media house which will celebrate small teams who are having world-wide impacts through their building or use of new technology.
My favorite conference so far has been Davos, the World Economic Forum. The people there were really incredible.
My favorite computer of all time? The Apple II that got me started, of course.