Robert Scoble and his productivity problem

By Mark O’Neill

It’s not often that I read anything by Robert Scoble. It’s not that I dislike the man or anything. I’m sure he’s a very pleasant guy. It’s just that his output is so staggeringly huge that I can’t keep up with him! Reading his Twitter feed for example is like trying to push back an avalanche with your bare hands. I sometimes wonder how he manages to fit a day job in between all his social networking.

But one of his blog posts caught my eye last night and once I started reading it, I just couldn’t stop because it addresses a problem most of us have these days. The post starts off with a letter that Mr Scoble received from a man who said to him :

“It seems to me that all these things — Twitter, Facebook, iPhone, Flickr — are a thundering bore and an utter waste of time.

I don’t have any of it — for that matter, I don’t own a Blackberry, iPod, wireless laptop, or even a cell phone — and I get along fine without them.”

And basically he wanted Mr Scoble to explain why they were so great, why he got so excited about it all and why they were so relevant in today’s world.

I have exactly the same problem and I’m sure you do too. You go to your parents, elderly relatives, non-tech friends and you start chatting about computers, the iPhone, the latest Apple product, and their eyes glaze over with utter indifference. They then start to ask you why you get so excited about something so pointless.

Mr Scoble’s answer is a quite long and sometimes rambling one but it mostly hits the mark. Do you agree with it? Or would you have answered the letter differently?