News is flying fast and furious that the blogosphere’s most famous blogger has decided to leave Microsoft to be a videoblogger at PodTech.net. I’m really quite shocked at the news, and as Chris Pirillo notes, most of the blogosphere won’t even find out until Monday! Scoble himself is yet to post any extensive commentary on the move, save for this:
This is a rapidly-evolving part of my life. I just made this decision and it got out before I was completely ready to talk about it. I invite you to meet with me at the VLoggerCon tomorrow evening at 3 to 6 p.m. in San Francisco where we’ll talk about it further (and I’ll post again tomorrow about what’s going on in my life and why I made this decision).
I wish him the best of luck, but man, what a blow to Microsoft. Or a huge mistake on their part if they didn’t try hard to keep him. Some might argue that Scoble has single-handedly made Microsoft a “nicer” company in the last couple years. He is the reason they have adopted technologies like RSS, and his Channel9 initiative has been amazing at kickstarting the trend at Microsoft to open up to the community. Scoble is not the kind of employee you can replace.
Here’s a bunch of notable “first mover” posts on the news:
- Robert Scoble leaving Microsoft for a Silicon Valley startup
- Scoble is Leaving Microsoft
- Scoble moves
- Robert Scoble to Leave Microsoft, Joins PodTech.net
I am looking forward to Robert’s post on this. There must be something truly special about PodTech for him to leave what he liked to call “the best job in the tech world.”
You might think that a blogger leaving his current job for a new one isn’t news, but I think you’re dead wrong if you hold on to that belief. Scoble leaving Microsoft is huge, and I don’t think we’ll truly understand the effects of this for quite some time.
UPDATE: Robert has posted about his decision. There’s also an excellent Reuters article on the story. Isn’t that crazy? A blogger switching jobs makes Reuters. Told you this was big news!
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