We Do Different Things

May 26, 2008 · Comments

Jennifer Leggio sent me this post where Rob La Gesse calls out Robert Scoble for being passionate about shiny new things, and reporting on them. Somewhere down in the comments (which have some really great meat on the bone), Mack Collier calls me into the story saying that he likes how I write about stuff. Robert replies that I’m different than he. Specifically, Robert calls out his ability to find walls to run into with limits and power user problems. He’s dead on. And this got me thinking in the larger sense.

We do different things.

There’s nothing more flattering than being lumped in blog posts alongside Robert or Jason Calacanis or all the other folks who also write a blog on the web. But you have to realize that we do different things. (people are welcome to disagree with my characterizations of them).

Robert Scoble writes about really exciting new things, and he shows videos, and he connects humans, and he scours this space for new amazing things.

Louis Gray seems to own the aggregator/repurposing space, with things like FriendFeed, SocialThing, etc.

Seth Godin is a marketer’s marketer, and points out the human experience with products and services.

Jason Calacanis has a strong history in the web space, and also talks from a media maker’s perspective.

Jeremiah Owyang writes more analysis-based posts on social marketing as an industry.

I could go on for a while, but I guess the point is this: we all keep blogs. We all type about things. But we’re different and offer a different set of take-aways from our writing and thought processes.

Me? I write about technologies that might impact businesses, and how to enable communities, and I try to write from two sides every time: high level, and then things you can do with it. Do I always succeed? No.

We Do Different Things

And I have hundreds of other folks I read. I read lots about marketing lately, outlying trends, a preacher, some parents, and a whole host of other folks who cover things of interest to me.

Calling out Scoble because he writes about shiny things would be just as useful as calling me out because I don’t write about aggregators like Louis.

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  • Very interesting post.. highlights something that us bloggers sometimes seem to take for granted, and that other people tend to glom us together into larger categories.

    You've inspired me to re-assess the information I have on my about tab, and add a more precise summary of what I actually cover (and will cover) in my blog.
  • You totally nailed why I read more than 600 bloggers in Google Reader: I learn something different from each one.
  • Totally. You are s social media consultant: you recommend things. Robert just finds them :-)
  • Totally true, Chris! You all write about the web, but it's far more complex than that. A newspaper would probably lump the bunch of you together as "tech".
  • I do see an upside to any reader calling out any writer. Even if the call-out shows a lack of familiarity with the author's intended purpose, it also shows a snapshot of the readership. I would argue that every writer has a noticeable percentage of readers who are casual, and therefore not connected with the core of the writer's being. If the writer doesn't care and writes as an artform, great, no big deal. But if the writer wants to attract more readers, comments that call-out a perceived deficiency are hard currency, far more valuable than the readers who get you so well that the only comments they make are fan-based.
  • If anyone does exactly what I do, but differentiates in an indirect factor—say, he's more personable—he wipes the floor with me. So you're darned right I'm different. I'd better be!
  • I'm a newcomer to the social circus that is chrisbrogan.com, but you piqued my curiosity when you mentioned a pastor. Which pastor's blog do you read?
  • Hi Brad- I read Jon Swanson's Levite blog. We met online through comments on a productivity site, but have since met three times in person in various parts of the world. We're personal friends now, though at first, it was about the mssage.
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