Broadcasting Brain

Flattery by Imitation is a new feature of Broadcasting Brain whereby we take an online presence (well known, obscure, or something in between) and attempt to capture their style in one single paragraph. Today’s post in this potentially irregular series features veteran blogger, interviewer, and Fast Company TV managing director Robert Scoble!

Why are we doing this? Because we’re no good at puppets or video. And, frankly, by the end of the week, couldn’t we all use a chuckle?

Condensed Robert Scoble

FriendFeed. I’m writing from Virgin Galactic XAA-11 enroute to the Moon. Sorry, that’s Earth’s Moon. I’m the first blogger in space and soon I’ll be the first blogger on the surface of another world. The wireless in the passenger cabin is surprisingly good as I’m capturing everything that’s happening via my cell. The streaming video sucks though. NASA can’t get the important things right, it seems: the lag is really bothering me. Good grief, it’s been decades since the last time we went to the Moon - can’t we get something as simple as high speed interstellar data communication right? It’s all vacuum around us, nothing to block the signal, right? Funny, when I went to the bottom of the Marianas Trench last year we didn’t have these kinds of problems and there’s TONS of water above your head when you’re down that deep. Anyway, I’m going to sneak some moon rocks in for Shel and Rocky and Gary Vee and the family and… aw heck, I’ll bring a pebble home for everyone who’s subscribed to me on Twitter and FriendFeed! (Hint: better subscribe before we land!)… I’m being told to shut down, apparently my gear is interfering with the ship’s navigation equipment. Looks like that’s Mars ahead of us instead… huh, funny. I’m the first blogger in the orbit of Mars. See, this is the stuff I live for. FriendFeed.

Maybe you should subscribe, there will be more fun stuff coming up in the future.

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Flattery by Imitation is a new feature of Broadcasting Brain whereby we take an online presence (well known, obscure, or something in between) and attempt to capture their style in one single paragraph. The inaugural post in this potentially irregular series features our precis of the experienced tech journalist and podcast host Steve Gillmor, who hosts both the Newsgang and Gillmor Gang podcasts in addition to writing for multiple outlets, including TechCrunchIT.

Why are we doing this? Because we’re no good at puppets or video. And, frankly, by the end of the week, couldn’t we all use a chuckle?

Condensed Steve Gillmor:

And as the fox begins its day scouting out the henhouse, the boll weevil faces extinction, and Steve Jobs loses another pound, FriendFeed bleeds into semi-obscurity, Ozzie launches plan B18, and Twitter endures; the natural order of cyberspace continues.

This just in: while many prominent bloggers are now safely stuffed into their Las Vegas accommodations for Blog World Expo 2008, this reporter has just learned that their assistant editors and substitute bloggers have staged an unparalleled coup of the blogosphere!

Minions everywhere have executed fiendishly clever plans to corrupt their masters blogs! The details are almost too incredible to believe, but they are starting to be revealed now:

Problogger by Darren Rowse has been changed to ProLogger! Branding itself as “anti-green”, the blog is now a passionate advocate of the pulp and paper industry! “Make money outdoors” is the new motto!

Chris Brogan’s blog is now Chris, Broken, a whiny emo-ish personal blog where the assistant editor (who’s real name is John), whines about losing his 14th girlfriend this year while envying the fun and frenetic lifestyle of his boss!

John Chow has become a food blog, talking about all of these great restaurants that the editor visits! Oh, wait…

Social Media Explorer has become Social Media Exploiter! The assistant editor has some bones to pick and they’re exposing the seedy side of social media, one deal at a time! (The assistant editor’s last name is Chapel, but we’re not sure if it’s a man or a woman…)

Awake at the Wheel has now become Asleep at the Wheel. It’s now full of biographies of politicians and corporate executives.

LouisGray.com was renamed LewisGrey.com. The assistant editor thought the new name would be easier to remember, plus he figured it would irk the boss.

GapingVoid was renamed Smoking Hole. All of the art has been replaced by business card sized panels with a weird grayish black color, perhaps from an explosion of some kind. Scott Adams was seen trying to sneak away.

Scobleizer was replaced by Sigmoidoscopeleizer. Don’t ask.

Queen of Spain blog was replaced by King of Spain. Kind of predictable, really. I think McCain/Palin is to blame.

Wine Library TV was the subject of the most astonishing coup. The editor of Scripting News flooded the Wine Library TV offices with knockout gas and has taken over. Winer TV is now devoted to electing the Democrats at all costs in November ($20 gift certificates at Gary V’s store if you vote for Obama/Biden!)

More updates later in the day if we can bear to describe them!

If ye be wanting more Broadcasting Brain goodness, why not subscribe? Arrrrh.

My name is a little unusual among names of Anglo-Saxon descent (or Dutch, I suppose, although I’ve read that my family name has some British roots as well). It’s more unusual than Smith and probably about as rare as, say, Scoble or Dykstra if you forget about the semi-famous people who have those family names.

Thing is, up until a couple of years ago, searches on the name Mark Dykeman would have been just as likely to pick up a guy from Toronto who does information technology work and a guy from somewhere in Newfoundland who is a kayaking enthusiast. Neither of which resemble me, especially not the latter.

As I built up all kinds of profiles for various Web 2.0 services a very predictable thing happened: I started to fill up the high ranking spots in Google’s search results. Today, as it turns out, out of the first 100 Google search results for the term Mark Dykeman, at least 95 of them are references to me. Which, in a way, is sort of neat, especially since there’s nothing terribly embarrassing out there except for some amateurish stuff which is anywhere from ten to fourteen years old.

However, I do feel a minuscule amount of guilt for the rest of these fellows named Mark Dykeman who don’t rank as well as they used to in Google Search. Ok, actually, I don’t feel guilty (at all), I just have this nagging feeling that something’s not quite right. It’s like they’ve been pushed off the face of this earth or else they’re buried in a landfill somewhere, neither of which sounds particularly fun.

The only advice that I can suggest to them is that, by golly, they’d better get busy in social media! Get out there, boys, and create content on all of those Web 2.0, highly ranked sites like Digg, Blogger, StumbleUpon, Helium.com, you name it, and log on as Mark Dykeman. Create a bunch of content, get it indexed, and see yourself rise up in the rankings where you belong!

Oh, wait.

That probably won’t work.

You see, I’ve actually used the username “Mark Dykeman” for virtually every site that I sign up with. Which means…

Hm.

Oh well guys, you’re screwed. Sorry. Early bird gets the worm and all that.

Maybe you could go with your middle names, kind of a David Meerman Scott sort of thing…

Well, in true Monty Python style, you could all change your names to Bruce, just to keep it clear….

EDIT: consciously or otherwise, this post was influenced by Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins’s post.

A light hearted look at social media for your Sunday.

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A light hearted look at social media for your Sunday.

SEO has become ubiquitous, yet meaningless. So much time has been spent explaining, in laborious detail, the meaning of the term “search engine optimization” that we forget that SEO has multiple meanings.

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