December 15, 2000. That’s when I started blogging. In seven years a lot has happened. The first two years of my blog have disappeared. They might be on a hard drive somewhere, I’m still trying to track them down. Dave Winer first linked to me on December 29th (sent me about 3,000 people, if I remember my stats right).

The term “weblog” is 10 years old on Monday. So lots of blogging birthdays. Jorn Barger, the guy who came up with the name, has some tips for new bloggers to celebrate. It’s good advice and advice I try to listen to. It’s amazing that I was three years behind Jorn but that when I started there was still only a very small community of bloggers (less than 200 that I could find — I did some research since Dori Smith asked me to do a session on blogging at the Internet conference I was helping Dan Shafer plan).

The Internet Archive has some of my posts backed up, but the earliest one they have is from February 2001 and the one they have from 9/11 is totally gone.

When I started I had absolutely no idea I’d have worked at two of the world’s biggest technology companies, at least in part because of my blog (NEC and Microsoft) and that I’d have so many fantastic experiences.

Truth is that this form of communication is still in its infancy. Imagine talking about newspapers just 10 years after they were developed and thinking “this is it, no more to do.” Yeah, right.

2008 is going to bring us live streaming video from our cell phones. What’s beyond that? Who knows, but I’m along for the ride!

Thanks to everyone who has sent me a link, called me an idiot, put up with my questions and laugh, read my posts without saying anything, or just joined me someplace for coffee. There are way too many people who’ve added something to my life to list. Dave Winer certainly is at the head of that list, so I’m glad we got to spend the afternoon together today.

In the past seven years I’ve survived:

1. The bubble bursting.
2. A car wreck.
3. A terrorist attack.
4. A divorce.
5. My grandma dying.
6. My mom dying.
7. A new marriage.
8. Five moves.
9. Five jobs (soon to be six).
10. Three URLS (1 http://scobleizer.manilasites.com 2. http://scoble.weblogs.com 3. http://robertscobleizer.com ).
11. I don’t know how many social networks I’ve been on (Twitter, Upcoming, Seesmic, Kyte, Flickr, Orkut, MySpace, Google Reader, Facebook, Yelp, Pownce, Jaiku are some of the ones I’m on currently).
12. Successfully getting Patrick into teenage years.
13. Birth of a new son, Milan.
14. Writing a book about corporate blogging with Shel Israel, “Naked Conversations.”
15. A new bubble?

Whew, and that doesn’t include the hundreds of interviews I’ve done (about 500 while at Microsoft and about 300 since then) or all the Google Reader shared items (about 8,000) or the posts I’ve done (I have no clue).

One regret? I’ve never gone back and read old items I’ve posted other then the few I’ve linked to here. I really should look back a bit more and see what life was like.

Anyway, I hope I’m here with you all seven years from now celebrating Milan’s seventh birthday. I wonder what’s going to happen in the next seven years?

Let’s take that ride together, shall we?

The Virtual Earth team wants our feedback.

Wonderful. Kudos to any company that wants its customers’ feedback and offers a participatory approach. So, here’s my feedback…

Microsoft added a LOT of whizbang features to its maps.live.com maps (3D, lots of photos, and such) but they didn’t focus on the basics.

First off, you need a redesign. Google is kicking your ass on simplicity. Microsoft’s UIs always seem to get more clutter. Your team should hire Ev Williams to come and give his talk that he just gave at LeWeb3. Get rid of stuff, don’t add it.

2. Mobile. Make it killer and do whatever it takes to get it on the iPhone.

3. Show examples of how to do great searches. Google does, you don’t (at least not before you get into a search box). Google is easier to use because of it.

4. Make it work for what people use maps for. Today I picked up Patrick at his school. I forgot how to get there. Patrick said “just search Google Maps for Petaluma Jr. High.” When I saw this note I tried the same on Microsoft’s system. Hint: Google worked, Microsoft didn’t.

5. Speed. Google is always faster everytime I try it. That doesn’t give me confidence that Microsoft is working on the right things.

6. When I search for “Mavericks, Half Moon Bay, CA” Google finds me a result, Microsoft doesn’t.

7. Split all the different views into different URLs. Have a page where I can select between them. If I wasn’t a former MSFTie I’d have no clue what the difference between “Aerial” and “Bird’s Eye View” is.

8. I still have no clue what “collections” are. “Saved Locations” explains what they are much better.

9. Don’t be pedantic. When I asked it to give me directions to PodTech’s offices it tried to correct my zip code from 94304 to 94304-1216. Google wasn’t annoying like that.

10. Microsoft’s maps look cooler (they show mountain terrain, etc) but are harder to read, particularly on laptop screens in bright sunlight. I find I actually switch to Google for this reason. Most of the time I really don’t need terrain, or pretty pictures, but just want a simplistic, easy to see in bright sunlight, map.

11. DO continue to kick Microsoft’s behind with Traffic data (I’m sure there’s other data you could overlay on the map the way you do with accident data, right?)

12. Redesign your directions results. Google got nine items in the same space that you only got six. I often look up maps on my laptop and that DOES make a difference!

13. My Location. My Location. My Location. My Location. My Location. My Location. My Location. My Location. My Location. My Location. My Location. My Location. My Location. My Location. My Location. My Location. My Location. My Location. That’s the best feature on ANY software I’ve used this year. I was showing it to Patrick today and it made him go “wow.” Not available on iPhone, but only on Google’s Mobile Maps version. This was a MAGICAL feature over in Europe!

14. You don’t understand the magic of the word “link.” I can always figure out Google Maps and how to embed it into my blog. It’s tough for me to figure out how to link to a Microsoft Map. Yeah, I’m an idiot so you might write that off as idiotic behavior but, remember, I worked the Microsoft customer support lines so I know there are other idiots out there like me. Some of them even blog. Every blog brings you traffic, even if the only reader that blog has is mom and dad. Call it a f***ing permalink and call it a day, will you please?

15. I’m surprised no one has used their photo trucks to put little pictures next to driving directions. Instead on both maps I get “turn right onto SR-92.” Why don’t you put a little picture of what the sign looks like? I’d love it if you said “you’ll see a sign that looks like this right before you need to turn right.”

16. Amazing that NEITHER Google or Microsoft have a link that says “using GPS.” I’d love to have a page that explains all about how GPS works, which models are the coolest to use with these mapping systems, and what I need to get and how I need to hook it up. This could even be a profit center. If Microsoft linked over to Amazon’s store they’d get a kickback for each GPS sold.

17. Google Maps remember my default location. Microsoft Maps don’t seem to remember anything.

18. Google has more viewing area horizontally. For some reason my eye likes that.

Well, that’s enough. I’m not sure why I like Google Maps more, but they keep being my default and nothing I saw on this little jaunt tonight made me question that decision. I have never needed 3D imagery to get around, preferring the simple approach (although those features are impressive).

What do you think? What would you work on if you were on the Microsoft Mapping team? I haven’t even attempted to look up anything international, either. But Google was very accurate in Paris and London and told me instantly where I was thanks to its My Location feature. That really is the killer feature for me and it’s one that now gets me to use my Nokia N95 to look at maps instead of my iPhone (the iPhone is better for viewing and navigating around maps, though, but that one feature has proven much more important to me than anything else in the mapping experience).

Anyway, good luck!

Oh, and has anyone built a map mashup yet for Facebook? I’d love to see where all my friends are located around the world.

The stuff from Asterpix is majorly cool for those of us who care about NewTeeVee.

I have two videos that really show off what Asterpix is doing (the demo videos on Asterpix’ site only show about 1/8th of the API that Asterpix has actually built).

The first is of Anoop Bhattacharjya, the developer/CTO behind this new technology who explains how it works and also gives me a demo. The second is of Nat Kausik, CEO, who shows me even more demos of how their APIs could be used.

I imagine we’ll be seeing a LOT more of this technology next year. This is one of the coolest demos I’ve seen this year.

So, what does it do?

Well, you upload your video. Then you can put hyperlinks on the video itself. You draw a square and the technology will make sure that the square stays on top of the item you hyperlinked (Anoop explains how it works). That alone is pretty freaking cool, but they also have an API that can talk to objects sprayed around the video (think of a Coca Cola site where the video could drive content to change on the Web page itself). It also makes it possible to link into specific parts of the video from blogs or other sites.

Some cool videos about design. First Gizmodo linked to TED Videos (those things rock, you should watch them all) recording of Philippe Starck, famous designer.

Me? I got some interesting stuff with a company named “EffectiveUI.” Don’t know who they are? They designed some of the coolest Web apps out there, including ones for eBay and a host of other famous names. I did three separate videos with EffectiveUI.

1. Demo of the eBay app they built and a discussion of rich Internet applications.
2. An interview with senior developer, RJ Owen, about the design process.
3. An interview with the president of EffectiveUI, where I learn more about what EffectiveUI does and its approach to design. We also talk about Microsoft Silverlight vs. Adobe Flash/Flex/AIR.

This is a cool “little” feature in the latest version of Google Reader. if you subscribe to multiple people’s Shared Items’ blogs (I call that a link blog) it won’t send you duplicate items anymore, but will show you how many people actually linked to it. That’s a KILLER feature. But, what’s next?

I think Google is working on a Digg/TechMeme competitor and this is the first in a series of features that’ll bring Google Reader there. All of a sudden my decision to do a link blog using Google’s Reader is looking better and better.

I learned about this over on David Carrington’s blog who demonstrates how it works.

Oh, and we’re in London and having a great time. Milan is as good a traveler as his older brother is. Hardly a peep the entire way. Wifi here in the hotel rocks. It’s always fun to travel thousands of miles just to learn that the Internet works here too! Heheh. Seriously, today we’re probably going to get a tour of the BBC. That should be fun. Last week we got a tour of a Wall Street Journal printing plant (all of the Wall Street Journals that you buy in Northern California are printed about 50 yards from Podtech’s offices. They can print 60,000 copies an hour at that plant alone. It’s amazing the amount of paper and ink they go through there. Makes me appreciate how cool it is that we can distribute ideas via the Internet now and not convince someone to spend so many resources getting our words out there.

I was on San Francisco State University’s campus this morning to give a talk when someone came up to me and wanted to see my Kindle. I’ve now shown it to dozens of people and the reactions are all pretty similar. I have started filming these reactions so you can see how people react when they first get their hands on it.

Why was I so harsh on it? Because of conversations just like this one.

Notice that she accidentally hits the “next” button. That she tries to use it as a touch screen. That she is bugged by the refresh rate. But, she, like me, is interested enough to want to buy one (she’s the first that I’ve shown it to that has that reaction). Imagine if Amazon had designed it better? Imagine how many more people would want it.

Oh, and Slashdot.org linked to my harsh review and, boy, did that bring a lot of haters to my chat room.

When Shel Israel co-authored Naked Conversations with me we interviewed about 180 companies about how they were using blogs and how that usage was changing their business.

Today I’m watching companies and political candidates and seeing a new trend that I’ve written up as the “Social Media Starfish.” I just did two videos, one that defined the social media starfish and all of its “legs” and another that explains how Google is going to disrupt many pieces of that starfish tomorrow with its Open Social announcement tomorrow.

Some things in text. What are the legs of the social media starfish?

1. Blogs.
2. Photos. Flickr. Smugmug. Zooomr. Photobucket. Facebook. Et al.
3. Videos. YouTube. Kyte. Seesmic. Facebook. Blip. DivX. Etc.
4. Personal social networks. Facebook. BluePulse. MySpace. Hi5. Plaxo. LinkedIn. Bebo. Etc.
5. Events (face to face kind). Upcoming. Eventful. Zvents. Facebook. Meetup. Etc.
6. Email. Integration through Bacn.
7. White label social networks. Ning. Broadband Mechanics. Etc.
8. Wikis. Twiki. Wetpaint. PBWiki. Atlassian. SocialText. Etc.
9. Audio. Podcasting networks. BlogTalkRadio. Utterz. Twittergram. Etc.
10. Microblogs. Twitter. Pownce. Jaiku. Utterz. Tumblr. FriendFeed. Etc.
11. SMS. Services that let organizations build SMS into their social media starfishes. John Edwards is one example.
12. Collaborative tools. Zoho. Zimbra. Google’s docs and spreadsheets. Etc.

It’ll be interesting to see how deeply Google will disrupt the Social Media Starfish tomorrow.

What do you think?

Here’s the two videos:

Part I of Naked Conversations 2.0: defining the social media starfish. 22 minutes.
Part II of Naked Conversations 2.0: how Google will disrupt the social media starfish tomorrow. 18 minutes.

BluePulse, today, released a bunch of new features for its social network.

But why is this social network gaining millions of users when Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc are out there already and are very entrenched?

Because they focused on a smaller niche. Their social network is ONLY for mobile phones.

I love this company and its service.

Want to get up to date on the mobile industry and hear all about BluePulse? You know what to do.

Venture Wire has the facts on BluePulse’s announcement today. Blognation has other details.

Oh, and BluePulse is yet another best-of-breed companies that came from Australia. What are they putting in the water there?

Oh #2: this video, with CEO Ben Keighran, was filmed in YouTube’s original offices. Is this going to turn out to be a “lucky office?” We’ll see.

Peter Kim of Forrester writes on his blog “Our data shows that 6% of US online adults use Twitter regularly.”

I say bulls**t.

There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that many people are using Twitter.

My data shows that the regular users are between 50,000 and 300,000. A high percentage of which are outside the United States. That doesn’t come anywhere close to the numbers required for 6%.

Keep in mind that Hotmail has about 200 million users every month. Yahoo Mail says they have about 250 million worldwide users.

But, I’d love to be proved wrong. Where did this data come from? How was it collected? Does Forrester stand behind it? What’s in the report that Peter linked to (I am not a Forrester client, so don’t have access)? Does it contain other numbers that just don’t jibe with common experience?

UPDATE: Someone just Twittered me this: “Peter Kims’s source on the unique users (he says 447,000 in Aug07) is Nielsen//NetRatings.” I doubt that’s data for “regular” users, or even online adult users in the US. I could see total registered users being that high, but that’d be world-wide. Watch twittervision.com someday and you’ll see that there are lots of users outside America.

UPDATE 2: Peter Kim responded here, and says they didn’t get the data from Nielsen. I still think the survey is very flawed if it’s bringing back such numbers.

Now that my player has been on TechCrunch and Valleywag I’ve been able to measure some new things about each of their audiences:

1. Audience. Just how many people visit their page (Kyte.tv shows me how many people are online concurrently. Valleywag has been averaging about 200 to 300 people, TechCrunch averaged around 1000).
2. Engagement. How many people click on links, or comment on items. TechCrunch regularly gets more than 100 comments. Valleywag rarely gets more than 10. When TechCrunch linked to me I got 1,000 visits. When Valleywag links to me it’s rare I get more than 100.
3. Loyalty. How many subscriptions do each site have on Google Reader and other feed readers. I use the example of Gizmodo vs. Engadget. Gizmodo has about 44,000 subscribers while Engadget has 350,000, on Google Reader.
4. Influence. % of posts that show up on Techmeme, Digg, my Link Blog, Slashdot, StumbleUpon, etc.

Anyone building a new metric based on these four things? If so, we could REALLY understand a LOT more about our audiences and advertisers would have a lot better information to choose from.

I’d probably add a fifth metric:

5. Concentration of people with intent. Does your site attract a lot of people who buy digital cameras, for instance? Then it’ll make a LOT more on Google advertising. That’s one huge reason why DPReview sold for a good sum to Amazon.

Anyway, this gave me a chance to dust off my old whiteboard. Oh, on my whiteboard is the Social Media Starfish. Yes, that’s a tease. I’m writing about that for Fast Company Magazine.