Anyone who has read this blog knows I go out of my way to avoid attacking people.  But in this case, the situation between Shel Israel and Loren Feldman is a perfect example of something I've wanted to talk about for a while which is the reason for this post.  To the extent that this comes off as an attack on Mr. Israel I apologize in advance. 

That said, a short review: Shel Israel made some amateurish videos (by his own admission) which Loren Feldman mocked using a "Shel Puppet".  Mr Israel got annoyed which, along with the quality of the puppet videos themselves, made the puppet very popular.  Now the puppet has its own website (shelisrael.com), is doing interviews with high profile Silicon Valley types (Steve Gilmore so far with others to follow), and even has a spin off (see: Scoble Puppet). 

Matt Craven of BlogHerald writes a fuller review of the situation here. 

Here's the thing, Loren Feldman is a satirist.  He uses ridicule to exploit people's flaws in a humorous manner.  I'm going to assume we can all agree on that since Mr. Israel admits to the flaws being exploited here (taken from his twitter feed)...

Difference between Loren & me #1 I'm learning vid. He's an alleged pro. Difference #2. I'll improve. 08:50 PM April 02, 2008 from web

So we can all agree, he's a satirist.  Moving on...

The thing I've always wanted to address is dealing with satire.  I think a lot of people react in the wrong way.  So when Mr. Israel provided the PERFECT example of how not to deal with such a situation I couldn't resist.

Below are a few rules (with examples) of what not to do when confronted with satire.

#1 - Don't lie to make your case stronger

First the quote from Mr. Israel's blog...

Maybe, Matt you would have chuckled, but when a couple of people pointed me to the site, because they thought it was mine and they were confused, I got pretty irritated. When I went to the site and saw my photo, and links to my own content. I then discovered that he also had started a couple of Twitter accounts, also making it look like me, I went nuclear ballistic, and this was a mistake on several levels, probably much to Loren's delight.

Now, if Mr. Israel is telling the truth I apologize in advance.  But I find it hard to believe that people just happened to stumble upon the new shelisrael.com site (the very day it was put up), saw a Shel puppet interviewing a rooster about social media and thought "this must be Shel Israel's official site".  I think it is much more likely that people who visit 1938media.com tipped Mr. Israel off. 

A lot of people in this situation, when they find others aren't rushing to their defense, start to lie in order to make the slight against them look worse than it was.  This is the absolute worst strategy to take and the quote above shows why. 

#2 - Don't attack the humor

Now from Mr. Israel's twitter account...

@geekmommy Unlike a class act like Ze Frank, Loren plays to the cheap seats with cheap shots. Next he'll make fart sounds with his armpit. 01:09 PM April 01, 2008 from web in reply to GeekMommy

When dealing with satire, especially satire aimed at you, there's a good chance you won't find it funny.  But many other people will and you're best bet is not to insult them.

Despite what an enraged Mr. Israel might think, finding Loren Feldman funny does not make someone a bad person.  So insulting everyone who finds him funny risks alienating people who might also be in Mr. Israel's audience. 

#3 - Don't attack the Satirist

Two quotes this time, both from the twitter account...

@briansullivan Yes,people pay attention to him. Loren is a video thug, an online schoolyard bully. He scares people. It needs to stop. 08:27 AM April 02, 2008 from web in reply to BrianSullivan

and then...

@senithomas No paranoia. Loren Feldman is attacking me, persistantly and relentlessly. It's time people knew he is/was. I plan to find out. 08:23 AM April 02, 2008 from web in reply to senithomas

So basically, "he's a bully and I think that's bad so in my very next tweet I'm going to be a bully".  Mr. Israel then goes on to sling insults every few tweets making himself guilty of exactly what he thinks Mr. Feldman did to him.

Two lessons here.  One, most people don't consider satire a slight.  I don't, for example, think the cast of Saturday Night Live means to insult Presidential hopefuls on their show I think they are just trying to be funny.  Same with any satire.  So when you attack a satirist you come off looking bad because to most people's eyes you threw the first insult (see item #4 below)

Second, when you attack someone that you are angry with you tend to make a fool out of yourself.  Mr. Israel comes off as a complete hypocrite here and if he wasn't so angry he'd probably see that himself.

#4 - Listen to your friends

Throughout this whole ordeal people tried to tell Mr. Israel he was taking himself too seriously and that he should just let it go.  He continually ignored these warnings.  The end of his blog post, his last word on the subject thus far, shows he STILL can't stop taking it too seriously.  He says...

Until all that happens, we will produce about one FCTV per week. While Loren may liken the people I interview to roosters and night watchman, the people the show is intended for--professionals trying to figure out how social media can be used where they work seem to find the content pretty useful and interesting.

Not only does that come off as arrogant from a guy largely riding his more successful partner's coat tails but it proves that he still doesn't get the joke.  He still thinks of this as an insult to him rather than "Loren Feldman being funny". 

#5 - Don't be over dramatic

From Twitter...

@revtriste People are silent about Loren because they fear they'll be next. It's like McCarthyism. It has to stop. 08:30 AM April 02, 2008 from web in reply to revtriste

To compare someone making fun of you to people losing their careers and sometimes their freedom because of their political beliefs is obnoxious.  Saying something like the above makes him seem like he has no perspective on what is and is not important in the world.

#6 - Never, EVER threaten legal action unless you can back it up

From Twitter...

Any volunteer lawyers out there? I'd like to discuss Loren with you... 12:45 PM April 02, 2008 from web

Two types of people sue, those with legitimate cases and crazy people.  If you don't have a legitimate case and you even threaten to sue you come off as crazy.  So before you make legal claims (even vague ones) do the research.

There was never anything even close to a case here and the fact that Shel Israel thinks the use of his name is somehow harmful to his brand (as if he was the only Shel Israel in existence) is again pretty arrogant. 

That's it!

I don't know much about Shel Israel.  He wrote a book with Scoble which is the only reason I knew of him and he started doing videos on Scoble's new FastCompany site which is the only time I've really heard of him beyond the book.  That said, this put a pretty sour taste in my mouth and I doubt I'll be checking out his videos. 

It isn't so much what he said or that he came off so arrogant its that he's claiming to be an expert on personal branding and social media.  After his disastrous performance during this situation I have no respect for his knowledge in that area and hence no reason to pay attention to him any longer. 

I mean, thick skin and humility are the first lessons you have to learn when getting into the blogging business.  If he doesn't know that I can't see how he knows much of anything. 

Some sad news from Dare Obasanjo's blog...

I’ve been writing a personal weblog for almost seven years. It’s weird to go back and read some of the posts in my old kuro5hin diary such as my early postings about interning at Microsoft and see how much my perspectives have changed in some ways and stayed the same in others. Anyway…

Although I’ve found this weblog to be personally fulfilling, the time has come for me to put it aside for the time being. This will be the last post on http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog.

He points to another post as his reasoning for this move...

This year was the first year I considered ending this blog because I'd finally gotten tired of the hassle of people complaining about what I wrote here. The final straw for me surprisingly hasn't been work related although there have been stretching points from disgruntled coworkers who lashed out because I use competing products to people complaining to my management chain and theirs hoping to get me reprimanded or even fired for not toeing the party line. I stand by everything I've written in this blog but I've now gotten enough heat and taken enough inter-personal communication training classes to realize that some opinions are more trouble than they are worth. So every once in a while, a quietly drown a kitten of a half written blog post because I can't be bothered with dealing with the feedback. However that wasn't the breaking point, since I've considered this experience part of "growing up".

This is a very sad to me in that I really admire Dare but I completely understand his reasoning.

The inherent problem with "transparency" is that not everyone reading your blog is nice.  There are a lot of unpleasant people in the world.  In fact, in my experience, there is at least one unpleasant person for each workplace (and if you only have one you are extremely luck)

Life lesson: unpleasant people are unhappy and that makes them hate happy people.  If you're a nice, happy person you basically have a target on your back by default.  That's life. 

So there are these unpleasant people out there and they don't like you.  Because of those two facts they are going to use whatever they can to attack you.  Again, this is just a fact of life. 

Which brings us back to blogging.  If you are a nice, happy person who wants to have a blog you must accept that someone is going to use that blog to try to get you fired.  That WILL happen.

Once you get as many readers as Dare you have to start weighing your career against your blog because your words are now in front of a lot of unpleasant people all of which are combing each paragraph for ammo to use against you.  Ammo they'll happily use at the drop of a hat.  As a general rule your boss can only hear about your blog so many times before it starts compromising his/her opinion of you (even if they know it isn't your fault)

Given how many subscribers Dare has I'm honestly amazed he kept blogging this long. 

Allen Stern has a post over on CenterNetworks where he suggests charging $1 for web feeds in an attempt to monetize blogging.  He goes further by suggesting that like minded blogs could be grouped by category and offered for a discount.

Here's the quote...

In my model, the $1 per month would allow you to take the feed with you on any device or reader you'd like. So you could read it at home on your computer, take it with you on your iPhone, mobile, etc. If you look at ReadWriteWeb, they show 159,000 subsribers. Let's assume that 10% would buy the feed, the other 90% would move to the free partial feed. That's would amount to a net cash flow of nearly $200,000 for the year. All because readers enjoy the content on RWW enough to send in $1 a month. Heck, there's more cash than that in your couch right now!

Let's take this a bit further and look at bundle offerings. I believe bundles would be where this model really shows its strength based on the pricing. A few sample bundles you could subscribe to the following "bundles" for $4.95 a month

It isn't a bad idea really but it'll never work. 

This comes back to something I call the Web 1.0 rule.  During the dot.com boom most of the startups thought they could use the massive amounts of available money to build a service, give that service away for free, and then start charging for it once it was mature.  Needless to say it didn't work. 

The reason...you can't charge for something that people have gotten used to getting for free.  People have attached a value to blog feeds in their minds and that value is "free".  So trying to charge money for them now is next to impossible.  The kindle delivers feeds over a free wireless connection and people complained about THAT subscription fee so the idea of charging a fee to get feeds via your own DSL connection is a non-starter. 

The lesson to take away from this, in my opinion, is that you should be very careful when choosing what you give away for free.  Because once you make that decision it's almost impossible to roll back.  I think that's an important lesson to keep in mind as more and more startups learn that advertisement based monetization isn't always a guarantee of profit. 

I found an interesting article on problogger.net which was written by a woman named Tina Su who is the author of thinksimplenow.com.  The article basically describes how she went from 0 to 2135 in 3 months.  Here's the quote...

Hi, my name is Tina. I started a little blog called Think Simple Now on September 27th, 2007 with zero experience in blogging, internet marketing or writing. By the time Christmas came, 3 months later, I had 2135 subscribers.

...

I often get asked how I did it, and I decided to compile this article as a record of my experience with hope that others might benefit from what I’ve learned. I want to show you that it is possible to achieve your blogging goals starting from scratch, using my case as a live example. I’ve learned that there are no real secrets to blogging success, all it really takes is a deep desire to do so, along with an urge to action.

Now, my blog has only been public for about a month and a half but unless my 2nd month is much more successful than my first (e.g. 2110 readers somehow pop out of the woodwork) I'm not going to do as well as she did.  That said, I just can't bring myself to follow a lot of her advice.

Basically she suggests a very focused approach to blogging.  Have goals, create content with your audience in mind, etc...  It isn't bad advice.

But for me, that is where the line is.  I'm not saying either philosophy is bad but there are two types of bloggers, the entertainers and the sharers.  The entertainers are trying to cultivate an audience the sharers are just trying to connect with whoever might be interested in the same things they are.  Mrs Su is an entertainer, I'm most definitely not.

Beyond that some of the stuff she suggests just feels dishonest to me (even though I know it really isn't).  Stuff like commenting on other people's blogs to get their attention feels wrong to me.  If I comment on your blog I think I owe it to you to be focused on what you said and not be trying to get you to read my blog (she makes a specific point of saying you shouldn't spam just for the record).

In fact, I've found that my commenting policy is just the opposite.  To take two examples off my link blog there is virtually no chance Matthew Ingram will ever subscribe to this blog because (based on his link blog) he doesn't bother reading anyone who disagrees with him.  But I do often times disagree with him so he's probably who I comment on the most.  On the other end of the spectrum I know for a fact that Aaron Stannard does subscribe to this blog but I rarely comment on his blog because I agree with him so darn much.

Anyway, even though it wasn't for me it is a good read and I'd suggest everyone head over there and take a look.  If it matches up with your goals as a blogger you'd be a fool not to take her advice to heart.  But it just doesn't fit me.  What I want from this blog is to get smart people reading it so I can say something and they'll be there to say "your completely right" or "your being an idiot and here's why".  Every indication I have says I'm on the road to that so I'm happy.  If that means never getting 2000 readers so be it.

I'll happily leave the mass audiences to the Robert Scoble's and Tina Su's of the world if I get the intelligent ones.

I was once told that the biggest problem stupid people have is that they don't know their stupid and in fact think they are smarter than everyone else.  I couldn't help but think about that after reading this over on Doug Meacham's blog...

Amy Jussel is a blogger focusing on media & marketing’s influence on kids. She sent a letter to Target’s Corp Communication dept regarding a billboard in Times Square that some people have found offensive. The good news is that target responded. The bad news is that this is what they said:

Good Morning Amy, Thank you for contacting Target; unfortunately we are unable to respond to your inquiry because Target does not participate with non-traditional media outlets. This practice is in place to allow us to focus on publications that reach our core guest. Once again thank you for your interest, and have a nice day.

A little lesson in life: Never think you can get away with saying something rude to a person by couching it in language you don't think they'll understand.  The Target representative is clearly saying "we don't think you are good enough to pay attention to" and seemingly thought they could get away with it by presenting it in corporate terms (assuming the person on the other end wouldn't be smart enough to decode what they were actually saying)

Now some might say that the Target rep. had no choice because of the corporate policy in place but that doesn't hold water with me.  If it were me, here's what I would have said...

Hi Amy,

We got your e-mail and always appreciate feedback from our customers.  Unfortunately our corporate communication policy hasn't quite caught up with the times and doesn't have a mechanism to deal with new media such as blogging just yet.  So I can't give you a comment on the billboard you asked about.  I apologize for this and will be sure to pass your e-mail along to my supervisor so that hopefully we can get this policy changed real soon.  Again, I apologize for not being able to do more and I hope you will continue to give us your business despite this oversight on the part of our communications department. 

The above accomplishes the same thing as the actual e-mail did but does so in a way that doesn't offend the customer and instead allows them to walk away  knowing they are ahead of the curve as far as Target is concerned.  Beyond that it shows actual respect for the customer as opposed to the feigned respect in the above e-mail. 

Sacramento has always been a town that's more about family than it is about friends.  I do have a couple of friends in town but most of them are gone during the Christmas break (working in state government) so even when I'm up there for the Holiday I don't get to see them.

The one exception is my friend Todd who does IT consulting in the area.  He'd encouraged me to start a blog for sometime (which is odd since he doesn't have one) so now that I had something to show I was excited to see him over my Christmas vacation (not that I'm not normally but you get the idea).  His first question: "So how many subscribers do you have so far?" 

To which I answered "I dunno"

Ever have someone give you a look that says "I thought you were smart but now I'm not so sure?"  I have....

I quickly jumped to my own defense telling him that I did understand the concept of Feedburner and that it wasn't that I didn't know how to check my subscribers it was that I choose not to.  This statement, as you might guess, earned me another look. 

I think the hardest thing for someone who is not a writer to do when starting a blog is to find their voice.  In a world where people communicate primarily through IM, 3 sentence e-mails and 140 character text messages the adjustment from quick responses to long form thought can be tricky.  But if you become fixated on statistics that job becomes all but impossible.

Incessant thoughts of "I posted this and lost a subscriber" or "2 people subscribed when I posted this" would eventually drive a person crazy and in doing so ruin any chance of that person (in this case me) developing a unique voice.  Sadly you can't be yourself while simultaneously trying to cater to everyone who might disagree with you.

This post marks the beginning of my second month of public blogging and I honestly still don't think I quite have the hang of it.   So to anyone who might be offended by my not checking these various statistics I apologize.  It isn't that I don't care (I appreciate anyone who subscribes or throws me a link) its just that, right now at least, I can't be honest and check all that stuff at the same time. 

Rarely will I quote text in one of these posts but rarely will you run across a blog that has its own mission statement.  Since this is one of those rare occasions I thought I'd share it before going any further.

It is the mission of AjaxNinja to provide quality instruction on how to start a website or blog, develop it using common web development techniques, and then subsequently direct traffic to the website or blog using SEO and Social Media..

I'm really not sure Aaron Stannard's AjaxNinja site fits into the narrow mold of what I would consider a blog but (as in the case of Techmeme earlier in the list) it doesn't really matter to me because of how entertaining it is.

What Aaron does that no one else on the web is doing is to analyze the actual creation of a web site and to treat that creation as an art in itself which is worthy of studying.  He's sort of like the Anti-Scoble in that watching Scoble can be instructive but Scoble isn't really instructing you as much as he's simply doing something instinctively well and allowing you to watch.  Aaron on the other hand tries to codify what someone like Scoble does and then state it outright which is a much better way for new people to learn. 

Aaron concerns himself with actually figuring out and teaching what it takes to make a real successful site from scratch and that is something I haven't seen anywhere else. 

Beyond that he does mix the normal blog type posts in.  I learned quite a bit about Facebook development just by watching his ups and downs as a developer beginning his first Facebook app.  That type of stuff is what makes the blogosphere invaluable and again Aaron is good at instructing about things that he himself has just learned. 

Finally, and I debated whether to throw this out there or not but I think its an important point.  Aaron is pretty young having not even graduated College yet.  Some might consider that a reason to ignore him but I see it as just the opposite.  Here is a guy who has shown he has the energy, know-how and leadership skills to create something at a young age and take that thing seriously.

Whenever someone great comes along people always lament the fact that they didn't have the opportunity to watch that person from the start of their career.  I suspect that one day Aaron could be someone great in this industry and that alone is reason to subscribe to his feed and that (along with everything else) is why I put Aaron Stannard at #7 on my Blogroll list.

If you'll recall I said that I'd be taking a post to address a hatemail I got recently.  As it turns out I won't be doing that. 

One of the biggest drawbacks to being human is that we have an amazing capacity to deceive ourselves in order to suit our own selfish needs.  So given a few days you can trick yourself into thinking something like "responding to this hate mail in a joking manner is ok because I won't be mean about it and it will give me a chance to defend myself against his claims".  Sadly, if you put things in perspective you'll find that mocking someone's criticism, even if you think its unfounded criticism, is just another way of attacking them. 

I think you have the right to defend your reputation if someone attacks you in public.  In fact, not only do you have the right to reply you're obligated to do so because you never know when that person might attack someone else and that attacked person may need your previous encounter as corroboration.  

But hate mail is not public and responding to it, even in a tongue in cheek way, just continues the altercation.

So you won't be hearing me bring up hatemail now or ever.  I think my ego can take a few slaps and I have neither the need nor the desire to fight with anyone...even those who don't like me.

P.S.  On a more positive note it appears Google is actually indexing this blog now.  Hate mail, my own vanity search...I'm really moving up in the world :) 

There is a lot of talk in the blogosphere about Techmeme and how effective it is at chronicling everything that goes on in the blogs.  I have no interest in being part of that debate because, to be honest, I don't really care.

For me, and I have to admit I stole this observation from Scoble's late night Techmeme video,  but for me Techmeme is simply Gabe Rivera's linkblog and that's good enough.  Does it matter to me that it might not pick up some great idea on a small blog somewhere out there...not really.  It's entertaining to me as it is and that is all I ask of any site that I frequent.

So maybe Techmeme won't manage to find the next big thing but it will find a lot of good stuff.  Beyond that it does a good job of documenting the "A-List" bloggers which allows me to ignore those blogs for the most part.  I mean, I like Jeff Jarvis and I'm glad a lot of people enjoy reading his blog every day...but I don't.  That said I do think he has some very interesting things to say and when one of those "very" interesting things come along I know that Techmeme will let me know about it. 

Finally, and this is a bit of an aside, but I just wanted to say that I think Techmeme has the classiest system of dealing with ads that I've seen on the web.  Their off to the side with graphics so they draw attention if you are interested but don't bother if you aren't.  Then they are ever so subtly slipped into the site's RSS feed in one big post so that I can check them out if I want to or again ignore them if I want.  Beyond that they are forced to actually use blog posts as their ads which makes it much more likely that you'll get something useful if you are interested in the ad. 

Anyway, all of the above things make Techmeme #2 on my Blogroll list.

Where to begin...

I honestly don't remember how I ran across Robert Scoble's blog or even when I read my first post but whenever it was that marked my entry into the world of the blogosphere.  As my feed list has grown over the years (largely due to Scoble)  I still don't think I've ever come across anyone who is better at the art of writing a blog than he is and though I rarely succeed I go out of my way to emulate  his style (in format not content of course)

Below are some of the lessons I've learned from reading his blog over the years...

(I should say that these are lessons I've inferred from reading his blog and not necessarily things he's said so if you take offense at it blame me not him)

Appreciate the Blogosphere:  Scoble is fond of advising people to link as often as possible but I honestly think there's more to it than that.  Linking is about sharing the fascinating things that you're coming across and in order to do it well you have to really want to show people the ideas that you are linking to.  A lot of blogs just use other posts as a jumping off point to go on their own tirade and I  don't think that is what the blogosphere is all about.  Bottom line: If you aren't fascinated enough to need to share the post that you are linking to than you probably shouldn't link to it at all. 

Credit Ideas: To a certain extent this belongs above but it's such an important point that I think it needs to be reiterated.  Even if you are just repeating something you heard at a conference it is important to give credit where credit is due.  A good blog doesn't have a lot of ego because the blogger realizes that the beauty of the blogosphere is in our collective knowledge and not in any one person looking good.  When you embrace that attitude it isn't that big a deal to say that 'x person' was the first to bring up an idea because he or she is part of your group and it is the group's collective knowledge that is really important. 

Blog what you find interesting: This seems obvious but in the race for more subscribers and higher page rates people tend to start blogging for other people instead and that is a mistake.  Again, a good blogger is all about enthusiasm and enjoying the chance to speak to the world about what is important to them.  People who try to tailor their message not only make it hard on themselves (by not writing about what they enjoy) but make it less entertaining for those who read them.

Embrace your detractors:  I think this is one of the most important lessons I've learned from reading Scoble's blog.  The reality is that anyone writing a blog is going to have someone launch an attack on them at one point or another.  People who try to ignore it or respond in kind just end up starting a flame war which leaves everyone worse off. 

By not taking the attack personally and even drawing attention to the attack you convey to the attacker (and to the blogosphere as a whole) that its ok to disagree with you.  Moreover you send a message that you're willing to listen to anyone who is willing to exchange ideas.  In doing that you both diffuse the situation and start a meaningful dialogue with the person who attacked you in the first place.

Acknowledge your readers: Before I was a blogger I was a commenter and being a commenter is not always an easy life.  It seems to have become cool in the blogosphere to bash the comments sections and I think that's a pity.  I'll be the first to admit that the anonymity of the comments can cause a certain negativity but there are also a lot of people who are just legitimately trying to share their ideas and (for whatever reason) aren't ready to start a blog of their own yet.  They shouldn't be disrespected for that.  The blogosphere is about ideas and those ideas should be cherished whether they come from the comments section or from another blog.

Be Open: One of the least understood lessons in the blogosphere is that of actually being open.  A lot of people pay lip service to it and a few people even try to live by it but very few actually accomplish it.  One example that jumps to mind is in the area of acknowledging a posts impact.

A lot of bloggers will make a post which causes a stir and then never say another word about it.  I don't know if that's out of modesty or what but it always comes across as a little disingenuous.  Scoble is one of the only bloggers I know who will actually come back with a follow up and say "I didn't expect that to cause so much controversy" or "Wow, I can't believe that got on Techmeme".  That's openness to me.

If you're going to be open than you have to say what you are thinking and ignoring your own impact is just one of the ways in which bloggers show they aren't doing that.

Pick sides while staying neutral:  There is an art to picking sides between two bloggers in the midst of a flame war.  Many choose to stay out of such conflicts or to go in guns blazing for one side or the other but I don't think either accomplishes much.  What Scoble does is to express an opinion without taking a side and to this day I've not seen a better means of moving a discussion forward.  Again, in these situations its all about diffusing the situation even if you aren't the one in the midst of a war.  By giving an opinion in a calm manner and being complimentary to both sides you can hopefully help them move forward and actually do some good for the situation rather than just ignoring it or making it worse.   (and on a side note, ignoring a big controversy that everyone knows about isn't being very open either)

There is probably more that I'm forgetting but that is all I can think of off the top of my head.  I'd suggest everyone check out the book  Scoble co-wrote with Shel Israel called Naked Conversations.  Though it focuses more on businesses using blogs its also useful for an individual wanting to take blogging up (in many ways the concepts are one in the same since businesses wanting to use blogs need to embrace personal communication between employees and customers)

In writing this I was hoping it wouldn't come across quite so "gushing" but its hard to write a blog entry about the man who is largely responsible for you blogging without gushing a bit.  The truth is that I disagree with Scoble at least half the time and I have no doubt that I'll eventually end up writing a critical post about him in the future but even that will be following his example which is why I'm praising him so much now.

(and for those who think this is a cheap stunt to get a link I'll have you know Google still doesn't consider this blog worthy of indexing...so nyah!)

Anyway, for all the above reasons and any I may  have forgotten Robert Scoble will probably always be #1 on my Blogroll list (and his Link Blog will be #2).

Addendum: In re-reading this post I think some people might get the impression that I think I'm some kind of great blogger.  I don't.  The fact is I'm new at this and though I can list the rules above pretty easily I don't always follow them as well as I should.  It doesn't necessarily take a wise man to share wisdom.