Robert Scoble vs. Rob La Gesse: "Noise" Pollution
“Heh, Rob La Gesse just deleted his FriendFeed account along with all my comments (he hates that comments were happening here on FriendFeed)” (Link)
The above comment was posted last night by Robert Scoble after Rob La Gesse
Robert Scoble's FriendFeed comment was about all that needed to be said on the subject, as the conversation took off from there.
Instead, Robert Scoble took to hounding Rob La Gesse on Twitter about the deletion, first claiming La Gesse did so because he didn't like how heated the conversation got, then went on to change his story to claim Rob La Gesse did so because he didn't like where the conversation was taking place. I'm not going to argue the motives behind La Gesse's
What I will discuss is how last night Robert Scoble went from"noise" to noise pollution.
First, let's not lose sight of the fact that this whole conversation-turned-schoolyard-shouting-match started over some bad press for Robert Scoble. Rob La Gesse wrote a critical piece about Mr. Scoble that claimed Scoble had a tendency to promote the hell out a new technology, then leave it behind when the next new bit of technology arrived on the scene.
Robert Scoble was first on the scene to drop a comment on the blog entry, then soon many of Scoble's followers from FriendFeed began to trickle in (myself included). Shortly there after the conversation started to shift to FriendFeed, and that's when all hell broke loose.
Rob La Gesse
Robert Scoble says: "What a nasty thing to do. He just deleted his account and took all MY content with it!" (Link)
But then Robert Scoble said: "Chris: actually the person who started the comment cluster does "own" the cluster. For instance, you are commenting on my cluster here. I can delete your comment. I could also delete the whole cluster including everyone's comments on it. I've already deleted one comment to remove spam. This is like you are commenting on my blog and I have the same rights there." (Link)
My thoughts: Wasn't La Gesse just exercising the very rights you say he has?
Robert Scoble says: "Mike: >>You obviously do mind, you're moaning that kr8tr "deleted" your friendfeed comments. Yeah, I do mind. I mind that he took his marbles and went home cause he didn't like what I was saying here on top of his Twitter messages."
But last night says: "I answer this post further in a place that I control: http://friendfeed.com/e/7ea9b75a-b30a-8cac-15c7-64e1da674b69" (Link)
My take: Robert Scoble took his marbles and went home because he could not control the conversation on someone else's blog.
Robert Scoble says: "Me? I follow wherever the conversation takes me." (Link)
So much for that.
Photo by Flickr user Don Fulano
Labels: blogging, friendfeed, rob la gesse, robert scoble, twitter
posted by Michael Beck @ 1:21 PM
3 Comments
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3 Comments:
Just to be clear - I did NOT delete my FF account (I can;t find HOW you delete a FF account!). What I did was EXACTLY what Scoble recommend that I do - he said if I didn;t like FF, I should not feed it. So I removed my feeds.
That delete the entire conversation - a result I did not contemplate, much less expect.
At that point Robert said he would never involve himself in my blog again. And THAT pissed me off - I consider Robert a Friend, and I thought he was over-reacting (and it turns out in hind site that he was - I did NOT delete his comments. I was NOT blocking him from commenting on my blog. I deleted ONE obvious spam comment on my blog post that added nothing to the conversation (unless you expected to find "hot nekked oriental chicks" by reading my blog post :)
And today FF confirmed that the comments are NOT deleted - they just don't have anyplace to show them - the context is gone now that my feeds are gone. They say they are working on bringing back the comments.
Personally, I can;t believe this issue did not come up before. I find it hard to believe I am the first one to remove a feed from FF!
Thanks for the post.
Rob
Hello Rob,
Thanks for the correction - I see your account is still active in FriendFeed, (just feedless).
I made the correction in the blog entry accordingly.
Thanks again, and thank you for the comments.
Apparently the fun really got started after I bailed.
From my view, I saw that Rob's post started getting comments almost immediately, and Scoble commented as well. As you said, the post was a bit critical of Scoble, and some of the first comments leaned toward agreeing with Rob's stance.
Then after 5 or so comments had been left, Scoble went back to Twitter and told Rob that he was going to discuss the post on Friendfeed, and linked to it on FF. Rob saw this as Scoble attempting to 'hijack' the conversation by trying to move it to FF.
I tend to agree with Rob, that's what it looked like Scoble was trying to do. I think he saw that the post and first few comments were a bit critical of him, and tried to move the conversation to FF, perhaps hoping that his followers would chime in, and would not read Rob's post.
Now as to Rob's being upset over Scoble trying to move the conversation to FF, I can understand why he was mad at Scoble, but from the user's POV, I support their being able to leave feedback whereever they want. Sure, it seems Scoble tried to herd people away from Rob's post, but I still think we need to give users as many options as possible and let them leave feedback on their terms, not ours.
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