This post was written by a guest contributor and is updated by 1938 Media as a public service.
The Scoble Curse
LZ Premiums: Scoble is a camera salesman at a scam camera shop. Breaks up kits into parts, cheap becomes a fortune: “Premiums” really refers to price. Early hater of Digital Photography (later reverses position) and now hates film. Reversing positions is a Scoble hallmark.
Fawcette Technical Publications: Scoble is conferences maven. Party party, liaison with coders/writers, just don’t pay them. Fawcette went from respected to seriously hated all during Scoble’s short reign.
Microsoft NetMeeting Evangelist: No Net. No Meeting. His hype notwithstanding, or most likely because of.
Microsoft Train Simulator Evangelist: Train Simulator 2 became Duke Nukem level vaporware. Forever promising a new version. Never happened.
Visual Basic SIG: Couldn’t code a lick (or focus on one topic for greater than 30 seconds) but was somehow a point man. VB later dies.
Winnov: Nvidia competitor. Heard of them? Me either. In spite of the hype he created, became capture card minor player.
Sean Connery: had a relative that worked at Winnov. Scoble talked him up. No surprise to Scoble watchers, that it was exactly at the point where Connery’s career nose-dived. Robert Scoble translated into English means “Jump the Shark Everlasting.”
Userland: Dead, flat-line. Became Dave Winer’s only friend. Scoble’s blog marketing helped not a bit. Service even lost all of Scoble’s blog posts.
RSS Evangelist: Browsers are dead. RSS will Rule the World. Doesn’t.
NEC (WinCE/Pocket PC/Tablet PC Evangelist): Yeah, look where that went. Niche city. NEC pulled out. Tablet PC had potential, but not with Scoble on the gig. Doomed.
Microsoft Vista Evangelist (PDC 2003): Easily the biggest trainwreck in Microsoft history. Even my tech clueless sister hates Vista. Vic the die-hard Microsoft loyalist that hires him, folds, going to Google (another Scoble curse victim).
Internet Explorer Defense Counsel: Yeah, what a gig. Microsoft shrill. Firefox sucks, Safari sucks, IE rules. Later reversed position when it became wholesale untenable. IE6 anyone?
Microsoft SmartPhone Shill: This is the end-all be-all Microsoft phone. That rumored Apple Phone will suck and become another dead Newton. Again, later reversed position when the iPhone became a cultural phenomenon. But more as a photo-op device, as didn’t do shaky phone cam video, his primary need, thus saving the iPhone from The Curse.
Palm Pre: All hot on it after seeing a CES demo.
HDTV: Had you bought when he was all fuzzy, you would have spent literally $5,000 too much. Starts shooting HD way too early, now the Scoble boringly laugh-hankerings are 150 to 200 meg. HD doesn’t cover up poor quality content. Goes self-righteous indignation, demanding the web do video in HD. Got bored with it and started bad-mouthing CE companies. Immediately the market saw it take off.
HD-DVD Evangelist (Microsoft/Toshiba shill): Sony was granted a Red Sea parting. Scoble’s early purchase made the winning bet obvious. Bet against, never lose.
Xbox 360 Evangelist: Overheating, failing systems galore. Becomes a $8 billion (and counting) rathole for Microsoft. Hates Wii. It becomes a phenom. Says BluRay will kill PS3. It doesn’t.
Podtech: Oh that bomb is already infamous Valley lore. “Aggressive stock options” weren’t.
Annie Liebovitz: Scoble goes photowalking with her. She files for bankruptcy and risks losing her houses and apartments. Scoble, patron of the arts, also literally climbs into Ansel Adams’ sink.
Seagate sponsorship: Underdog Western Digital whips Seagate to a death-knell under his watch. WD marketing guys literally rejoiced when Scoble got the gig. Hardly gives them any benefit outside of firehosing “Thomas Hawk” with tons of freebies. Bill Watkins, the CEO that hired Scoble, hounded out of the company with torches and pitchforks. Hire Scoble, ruin your career, proven true twice.
FastCompany: Slow. Fast Company Digital dead. Lots of normal subscribers turned off by the ego-hound blogger dweeb.
Scoble Jean Dixon: Steve Jobs is ok. The Yogurt shop guy told me so. Within days, Jobs takes a leave for a liver transplant.
Toyota Prius: All giddy on the 2010 model, in an annoyingly Yuppie Scum way. But even factoring future year waiting lists, the Prius market tanks, down from 45% to 65% depending on sources. Lower gas prices blamed, but Scoble’s interest is an important factor. If Scoble gets tingles, slice off at least 45%.
Web fad tools:
1. MySpace. Hated it. Caught on. Didn’t like it. Went back to blogs. Ignored it.
2. Facebook. Hated it. Caught on. Liked it. They didn’t listen to him or hire him. Hated it again.
3. Twitter. Hated it. Caught on. Liked it. Used at lame tech conferences to have Barmeetups. But then hated it, moved to Friendfeed instead.
4. Friendfeed. Loved it. Hyped it. Still loves it. Community gave up and moved on.
It’s hard keeping track per his endless mind-changes, but the overwhelming rule of thumb: if Scoble hates it, it will catch on. The reverse is true, anything he hypes won’t catch on.
Rackspace: Quackspace ahoy. Some floundering geek meet-up deal, for an increasingly failing hosting company. Blogger parties and Tweetups, instead of actual service. Oatmeal mush of a generic multi-poster blog. No hook whatsoever.
December 2010: Rackspace goes down yet again. This like the 30th time since he’s been hired. Building 43 is empty.
January 2010: Scoble blogs about his Prius. Toyota has a massive recall.
February 2010: Scoble gets TED press pass. Show is disaster, show founder mocks speaker Sarah Silverman on Twitter over the use of the word retard and penis.
