scoble: personal or corporate blog?
Update: Scoble responds to this analysis. Thanks Robert for the response. Also, Scoble is the Chief Technology Evangelist at Microsoft, in case you didn’t know.
More Update: I wrote a follow up to this post here. I changed my mind — I think Scoble was a PR Microsoft Guy all along. What was I thinking? Well, he responds to the update here.
+++++
In May 2006, Robert Scoble shares his honest story about the death of his mother: It is open, sincere, and engaging. Many people responded with heartfelt condolences and warmth. In my opinion, if there ever were an example of community, of rallying around and for somebody, Scoble’s post on his mom certainly fits the bill. In response to that post, the Orcology Blog poses a relevant question: is Scoble’s blog a Microsoft Blog or isn’t it? It’s difficult to tell.
Robert Scoble responds to the Orcology Blog and explains why he blogs and that he doesn’t do it for the money and that there isn’t a business model for his blog. In his words,
Why do it then? Because audiences improve everything they touch. Our book is better because we showed it to you before we published it. My videos on Channel 9 are better because you’re able to add your two cents onto the subject (or ask a question I forgot to ask). My friendships are better cause everyone in the world gets to see what I’m thinking and going through and we don’t need to cover that stuff when we get together. Even my relationship with my wife is better. If I forget to take out the trash all she has to do is tell you and then I’ll get heck about it from everyone. It’s funny the personal feedback I get on all these topics.
This is a good explanation and I buy it. I am a fan of Scoble and I enjoy his content. After more thought on this and the Orcology blog’s question, I wonder if there is a more quantitative way we can find out what blogs talk about.
I recently started learning Ruby. I love Python and Perl, and I’ve always wanted to learn Ruby because of the cool things I’ve heard about it. So, I began my journey with Ruby. The first thing I wanted to do was to run some Ruby scripts based on some computational linguistic concepts I learned while I was in graduate school. My test problem? — Scoble’s Blog.
I want to know how often he talks about Microsoft. His blog is his personal blog and has a wide range of topics, or it seems that way. I wonder how varied his topics are. If we show that x% of his posts has the word “m[M]icrosoft” in it, it doesn’t prove that he’s not genuine. We can, however conclude, based on data, that he talks about “microsoft” x% of the time.
So, using Ruby, I did the following:
- read in Scoble’s Feed URL.
- Parse it
- How many post are there?
- How many post have the word “m[M]icrosoft”?
Pretty simple. Below is the Ruby Code (indentation convention was lost due to blockqoute):
# @author: Pete Abilla
# @date: 7, June, 2006
# @function: crawls hard-coded feed url and
# computes basic linguistic statistics on given word
# in posts.
require ‘rubygems’
require ‘feed_tools’
feed = FeedTools::Feed.open
(’http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/feed/’)
keyword = ‘microsoft’
total_occurances = 0
total_posts = 0
keyword_pattern = Regexp.new(keyword, Regexp::IGNORECASE)
feed.entries.each do |entry|
puts “Entry: #{entry.title}”
matches = entry.content.scan(keyword_pattern)
if matches != nil
puts “Occurances of ‘#{keyword}’: #{matches.size}”
total_occurances += matches.size
total_posts += 1 if matches.size > 0
end
end
puts “Total number of posts in feed: #{feed.entries.size}”
puts “Total occurances of ‘#{keyword}’: #{total_occurances}”
puts “Total number of posts in which ‘#{keyword}’ appeared: #{total_posts}”
Results?
* Note: My program, for some reason, only grabs the most recent 50 Posts. I’d love to grab all Posts and use that as my data set. In the absence of more data, I have to use the 50 Posts that I can grab and analyze. Yes, it’s a small data set, but it is still representative of the whole, but with a greater error band and not a narrower one that I’d prefer. In the future, what I could do is to store the feed in my local MySQL DB and run analysis off of that datastore.
We see, based on a small sample of 50 posts, that the word “m[M]icrosoft” appears in 27 posts, or based on a sample size of 50 posts, 54% of Robert Scoble’s posts contain the word “microsoft.”
What can we conclude from this? Scoble enjoys Microsoft and talks about it over half the time. But, he also talks about other things, half the time. To the question of whether or not Robert Scoble’s blog is a Microsoft blog, the data allows us to conclude that it is a Microsoft Blog 1/2 of the time.
Where does this bring us? Well, I’m still going to read Scoble’s blog — I enjoy it and it’s content is relevant to me and, I personally believe that he is genuine.
This is what I think is happening: the lines between personal and work is very blurred. Much of a person’s identity is wrapped-up in their work. So, when we see Scoble blogging about non-microsoft things 1/2 the time and about Microsoft the other 1/2, then I think we’re observing somebody who identifies Microsoft as a part of who they are. I don’t think this is bad; it is something to be aware of and certainly something we shouldn’t judge. I’m still going to read Scoble’s Blog. I enjoy it. I just now need to be aware that, on average, he’ll talk about Microsoft 50% of the time. Those odds aren’t bad for good content, 1/2 of the time.
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Comments
However, a particular post containing the word “m[M]icrosoft” does not necessarily make that entire post a Microsoft post. I could comfortably discuss an innovation of Apple and, at the end say: “How long before Microsoft copies this one?” Does this turn the entry into a Microsoft post?
Similarly, on Monday I could spend 23 screens on a treatise on avian bird flu and then on Tuesday the sum total of my daily post could be: “Microsoft is nice.” So, I have 50% of my posts discussing Microsoft, but am I really devoting 50% of my blog to Microsoft?
On the other hand, I could also make a post around the topic: “I wonder what psychologists think of a man named Gates who builds and operating system called Windows” and never mention “Microsoft”, but I’m clearly discussing Microsoft.
So, Pete, I’m not convinced Scoble is even a 50% Microsoft blog. I’ll be interested to see some higher linguistic computation in your next Ruby app. Maybe some word counts internal to each post. Or you could go for something really cool like word usage patterns. 
@Karl,
Thanks for the comment, Karl. I think you’re position makes sense. For Scoble, however, the question of his blog being a Microsoft Blog or not is an old one. After all, he’s the Chief Technical Evangelist @ Microsoft. So, how does delineate between his work and personal life? If you step through his posts, one-by-one, they’re about Microsoft. That’s okay. No problem with that. Nowadays, it can be suspect what people’s underlying motivations are when they blog — is a corporate blog or is it a personal one. That question alone hinges on the notion of trust.
As for me, I trust Scoble is sincere and genuine. He’s so tied to Microsoft that it weaves through his blog and life. Is it a Microsoft blog? Despite the data, it’s still difficult to tell.
Thanks for reading.
Facinating…for someone who I associate with the MS brand, he could speak more about MS, and I wouldn’t mind. Robert is how I get MS news now. (although I wish he would talk more about sharepoint and other enterprise products, not just consumer)
Funny how, but i do find this post of yours about Scobble(who i don’t know until now) very interesting. Your approach, very professional. You are right about the personality of the man who talks half of the M” figure and half of his own on his blogs. In fact i for one is on my way to posting an article on my blog about my work in the amusement industry(ibn full) although right now i am venturing in SEM and SEO.
Amazes me each time i read your blog coz aside from having that personal touch of admiring bits of details, your approach to the mind bogglers you encounter is way very technical if i may say it.
I hope to learn the mastership that you are someday,,,,somehow.
[...] I wrote this hack last week and discussed it in this post (lost indention convention due to blockqoute). # @author: Pete Abilla # @date: 7, June, 2006 # @function: crawls hard-coded feed url and # computes basic linguistic statistics on given word # in posts. [...]
[...] Yeah, Pete Abilla, I've been writing about Microsoft about 50% of the time lately. (He analyzed my blog). Sorry about that. I'll try to make the percentage less, but there's just a lot of stuff coming through my email streams about Microsoft lately. [...]
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Very interesting analysis, Pete!