Scoble, Hugh and A-Lister Groupies

If this is your first visit at iScatterlings, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

There’s a big debate going on over at Robert Scoble and at Hugh Macleod’s blogs.

Scoble reports that his A-List friends have noticed a decrease in site traffic that may be due to Facebook, MySpace and other social network sites and that I am NPG at these social networking sites. Boo hoo.

Robert means I am Non Persona Grata at Facebook because I am too old. Hey, when I was 22yrs old, I viewed 27yr olds as ancient has-beens. So being on the wrong side of 35 means I’m a dinosaur?

Am I?

Click on the links to go read what the hoo-haa is all about.

[LINKS]: Robert Scoble , Hugh Macleod’s Gapingvoid

While over at Hugh’s place, he says that we would be…

“…far better off going off to somewhere like Facebook and building your own social network with like-minded folk, based on your own collective interests, your own collective passions and own collective sense of merit, than loitering around the Blogopshere, waiting for some rockstar like KAwasaki, Scoble, Arrington, Cory etc to link to you… and hoping in vain that the latter will somehow transform your life. It won’t.”

Hugh, it isn’t really about getting a link from an elite blogger or about life transformation due to being linked to. It’s about obtaining insight into what sets a great blogger apart from the rest. It’s about making a difference to one’s skills as a writer of good blogs. It’s about learning how to compose an article that reads well and possesses the content and other good format techniques that make articles like yours and your peers such great reading. We want our audience to recognise good writing craft and great penmanship in us too.

A-Listers like Godin, Macleod, Kawasaki, Cory, Scoble, Searls, Tebbut, Stibbe, Dodds etc are fundamental to this goal and the skills they have are those abilities that most bloggers I know of, aspire to and are desirous of. Also, most bloggers I know are not of a bunch of A-List groupies wanting to pester and leech you dry.

iScatterlings interacts with wonderful people around the world and holds them in high regard. They are not celebrities in the realworld meaning of the word but what they do and write about is fully deserving of superstar status.

For example:

Take Champers as an example. Here is a woman whose life is devoted to two things: AIDS/HIV prevention and dancing on tables when bladdered! Champers lets off steam big style. And who can blame her when her day is end to end death by AIDS. Besides these two passions, she writes articles at her blog that are just so good. Champers devotion to her lifeswork of caring and preventing AIDS/HIV from creating more orphans, is worthy of a Nobel prize. Her writing too is a hallmark of excellence to us all.

Then there is Rachie, a beautiful young woman from UK at Living For Disco who is now based at Windhoek in Namibia. Rachie is a VOS voluteer, devoting her life to preventing poverty and disadvantage among the peoples of Namibia. Her blog is astounding. Her skills enormous and her work is maybe way beyond the comprehension of the DnGers at Facebook and other social networks. Does she care about joining Facebook? I doubt it but she is of the age group that can.

Next is Michelle at Seeking Serenity. A young single mother struggling with life, earning a buck, fixing the Landy while mindful and very attentive to her parental responsibilities toward her teenage son. But she is having fun on the way and writing her way into our hearts. Again, here is a person who draws a large readership and maybe also does not care about social networks. But is imminently eligible.

And also Merja at Girl Uncovered based in northern Namibia. Merja writes it as she see and speaks it. Magnificant stuff. No hold barred. A true blogging star in the making and I think not fussed about Facebook.

In juxtaposition all the gents I mentioned at the start write about marketing, techie, Web 2.0, branding and stuff that doesn’t mean a heap of crap to a HIV/AIDS victim, a struggling single parent in South Africa, or a volunteer in Namibia and a budding Enigma in northern Namibia. Who ultimatley cares about Web 2.0 celebrity? Not my A-Listers. They are too busy engaging in life’s important issues. As for me? I am happy where I am doing what I do.

I suspect what you do represent to my A-List ladies is probably a hope that by learning from you all then a possibility exists for them to get millions of people to read their works. All of you gentlemen and ladies who are bloggers stars, are important to all of us. Please don’t dismiss this or us so easily. We are here to stay and need your inspiration. Don’t deprive us of hope.

Whether the A-List is here or not is immaterial. To those that you inspire, they will always read you. But I do not think it will go as far as idolisation, crying for a lock of your hair or kneeling at your feet!

As for the mass social network scene? It is not my scene. Too shallow and just does not fulfill my needs at all. In my opinion it is more suited to the *DnGer brigade.

UPDATE 7th July 2007: Scoble asks the question here that says it all:

“All four of the social networks I’m on, Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, and Pownce are VERY active. How we’ll keep up with all of these I have absolutely no idea.”

Any views on this?

Scoble, Hugh and A-Lister Groupies

ca-ref-pub-5816813381914657

* DnGer = A person who must have the latest designer label clothes, accessories, gizmos, sunglasses, reading glasses, car, handbag etc etc. In other words - just like me!!