Outstanding statement! Well done Aaron.

P.S. I just to follow Robert on Twitter but gave up following him when I realized that he was just always there.

@ Christian – Yes, we all evolve and yes, I have the choice whether or not to tune in. I’m not disputing Robert’s relevancy, but rather his relevancy to me vs. new voices that are more focused on topics of interest to me. I don’t want to hear about EVERYTHING, even as someone who considers himself an early adopter.

@ Nathan – to be clear, this isn’t taking a potshot at Robert. I have a tremendous amount of respect for what he’s accomplished and I think there is a lot of value in following his updates. For me, though, that value has diminished over the last few years, which is what inspired me to share my thoughts here.

Regardless, this conversation is probably bigger than Scoble, but I found the evolution of his updates relative to my attention as the inspiration for this post.

Certainly, it might be nice is the material was more focused or less raw. But what’s wrong with experiments and some of them not being perfect? I think everybody needs a social media sandbox.

On the issue of culpability: you seem to lay blame at Roberts feet…but why not the people who read him? Shouldn’t they/you just find a better way to scan?

Or why not the technology itself? Or why not Google or web developers as a whole for not developing better filters which help us get past some elements of chaff (or at least what we perceive as chaff/noise)? All that said, I think your article is well argued and raises important issues and it doesn’t seem that Robert seems scathed in the least.

The alternative just seems brittle and procrustean…. (on the flip side…I’m glad I don’t have to know what his cat is doing, chasing, eating, throwing up…)

Or actually, you don’t have to pay anything. And you don’t have to tune in either.

Personally, I find Scoble informative and still enjoy reading/following him.

He’s approachable and devoid of some of the arrogance you can often encouter with someone at his level. He’s been a mentor to so many and sometimes it’s tough when you feel you’ve learned all you can from someone. But I suggest you maintain your tabs on Scoble. I think he’ll be relevant for some time to come.

Yes, he’s evolved, but we all do, eh Aaron?

- Christian

@Thomas and @ Robert: I have updated the post to reflect my mistake about the fees.

I appreciate your willingness to participate.

1. I think you should change the part about “for a small fee” Scoble would interview your company. That’s simply not true. Scoble pretty much interviews as many people as he can and he never takes money for the interviews. As mentioned before Seagate did sponsor his show and I suppose he interviewed them at times, but he was always very clear in disclosing that Seagate was his sponsor.

2. I follow Robert most of all for one simple reason. He is on the cutting edge of what tech I should be using. He is the early adopter’s early adopter. My general rule is that once Scoble mentions something about 10x then maybe I ought to start checking it out.

It was Scoble’s constant promotion of techmeme that got me checking it out. It was then his constant promotion of Twitter that got me checking that out. More recently, it was Robert’s pounding the table over and over again on FriendFeed that got me checking that out.

Robert is a social filter for new and cool tech and I appreciate that as his finds are sometimes some of the best new things online.

3. Robert having an editor wouldn’t be the same thing. Part of the beauty of Robert’s style is that he simply keeps going fast and furious. He’s uncensored. Every day in some way shape or form he’s someplace on the web talking about what he finds interesting and what you might find interesting as well. I want that. I don’t want some editor deciding that this or that shouldn’t be said because it doesn’t quite sound or read right.

I rarely follow people who auto-follow back; that’s usually a warning sign that they have moved from discussions to broadcasting.