Mega Blogger / Vlogger Robert (Scobleizer) Scoble Speaks to SebRT.com

SebRT.com would like to extend a very special welcome to ROBERT SCOBLE! Robert was the famous Microsoft
Blogger, not to mention also very prolific. Earlier this year amongst a
press frenzy Robert was acquired from Microsoft by the start-up PodTech.net out of San Francisco, California.

Robert, Welcome! For those who don’t know who you are, tell me a little about yourself. How long have you been blogging?

I started
blogging in December 2000, about 6 years. I was fairly early, but not
the first wave. When I started I was helping plan conferences and I
asked some folks what was hot and they talked about blogging. I saw
that there were only 400 blogs or so, and thought “There weren’t enough
to do a conference session on.” But I started doing one and within 10
days Dave Winer had linked to me and sent 3000 people. So I quickly realised more people were reading blogs than writing them.

I was a magazine editor, I worked at “Visual Basic Programmers” Journal. I interviewed Steve Wozniak.
I watched their start-up grow from 8 people to 200 people. From there I
went to NEC and from there I went to Microsoft to be an evangelist.

How did Microsoft feel about your blog when you started there?

I got hired and I had
a blog and figured I wasn’t going to stop. I didn’t feel I had to get
permission to blog there were already 80 blogs when I joined Microsoft.
Now there’s thousands of Microsoft employee blogs!

A standard technology blog interview question: What was your very first computer?

My Dad bought an
Apple II back in 1977 and we had Apple II’s in Junior High. I got a
tour of Apple Computer Corp. when it was only one building. My first
personal computer was a Apple Mac SE30.

If you were
lost on a desert island and you could take one piece of computer
hardware for whatever reason (not to help being rescued) –What would it
be?

Oh Jeez….If I was
Lost on a Desert Island…hmm… I’d want Google! [Laughs] I’d probably
want a GPS to find out where I was. Then I could build a boat so I
could escape. If you expand that I’d just want my laptop (with it’s
built in GPS). If you didn’t let me have a GPS I would probably want a
camera with a lot of memory so that if I ever got rescued I could share
what it was like on the island.

Why do you continue to blog? There must have been some dark times when you were thinking “why bother?:”

Because I have something to say. I didn’t know
that there was going to be money in it when I started. I wanted to be
able to put things into Google and pull it out again. Bad times, well…
[bad]Comments are sometimes assholes, never thought about quitting
blogging. I have thought about disabling comments sometimes. I have
thought about cutting back. I have thought about going Skiing instead
of blogging. In life you have to make a choice of what you have to do
with your time but it keeps pulling me back in because it’s so fun. The
people that you meet are remarkable it’s just part of my life, I hear
things and I write about them…I just wrote something while we have been
on the phone..about Windows Vista…

Where do you see podcasting a year from now?

Better search engines, that’s on the horizon. I
have already seen some of them like Plug. You can do search that go
right into the files. A year from now there will be twice the number of
videos that there are today on the internet. More quality, more to
choose from, with bigger hard drives to store the content. The Hi-def
camera are going to start getting cheaper, for video blogging. Right
now to get a decent hi-def camera will be minimum 1,500 dollars and
high end around 6 to 10 thousand. There will be pressure on iTunes and
other media distributors. There will be pressure for systems to deliver
wide-screen hi-def content.

As a podcaster and blogger, I was pleased
to see that you started podcasting a few months back. What made you
think to do a podcast?

It was back at Microsoft. We were just sitting
around after one of the big conferences. One day I wanted to share
something I was watching with the internet. That led to Channel9. Now they are getting more than 4 million unique visitors a month on Channel9.

Why did you join PodTech.net?

Because my son was down in the bay area and I
wanted to be closer to him. I was watching the trend lines and Channel9
was going nuts. I knew I wanted to get into the video side. I was on a
panel with John Furrier and we went out drinking and one thing led to
another…you know how it is and that was it.

I was excited to be part of the recent Vloggies even though my video did not win an award, how do you feel about the Vloggies?

I loved the Vloggies. That was a fun party. I
hadn’t heard of a lot of those videos and I have been watching more of
them. Were very excited about the Vloggies!

Do you have any really really exciting interviews coming up on your “Scoble Show” that you can talk about?

Today we have a tour of Microsoft Research. This morning we had of demo “Like.com” the new search engine. Go check the videos out!

Well thank you very
much for taking the time to talk to me today Robert. It has been a
pleasure having you for the blog and as we both know a long time in
coming, because of scheduling!

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If you want to find out more about Robert Scoble visit his Blog, The Scobleizer. Robert is currently producing a video podcast for PodTech.net and that can be reached at the following address: http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/

If you have any questions do not hesitate to email me!