Simon’s Blog

If you follow the tech corner of the blogging world, you’ve probably seen the spat that’s been going on between Scoble and people from that Gadget sites Engadget and Gizmodo. If not, you can start here, and then look at more recent posts in Scoble’s blog. And now Jason Calacanis has joined in with an open letter to Scoble. I suspect most people don’t care too much about the various insults that have been thrown around… beyond wondering if those involved mightn’t like a little cheese with their whine What’s far more interesting, I think, is that Scoble has a problem.

Scoble’s problem is thus: he needs more eyeballs for his Podtech video blogs; and he says wants to get these eyeballs via links from sites like Engadget/Gizmodo. But here’s the thing - I’m not sure plain old links are what’s needed to get the kind of traffic he needs. Now, I’m using the phrase “plain old link” in a rather specific (and non-standard) way here. What do I mean by “plain old links”? Well, I mean the kind of blog entry that simply re-hashes a press release, or re-hashes a blog. In short, what you might call “re-blogging”. Re-blogs are dull beyond belief.

My assertion is that what people really need is to be either: linked from interesting, unique, well-written editorial coverage that makes people want to find out more by going to the original source; or linked in a really short way, like, “You need to watch/read this“. Why do I say that? Because, as I said above, I suspect most people don’t care about “re-blogs”. And… if they do, it’s because they want to get all their information in one place. Speaking personally, if I read what is obviously a re-blog on Engadget (and it’s rare that I do - I mostly skip over the re-blogs without reading them) then I’m certainly not gonna click on the link to the original source… because I just got the info from the re-blog.

Bottom line. Getting serious numbers of eyeballs to a new web-based offering (like ScobleShow) is no different from anything else. You need to build the brand - and you don’t build the brand via links from “re-blogs”. That’s probably almost as ineffective as advertising a new brand. Instead, you need to build your brand by, amongst many other things, getting great, unique editorial coverage.

Here endeth my two cents…