by Flemming Funch
Robert Scoble is a blogging evangelist for Microsoft. He's a friendly, talkative guy, who, I guess, is very valuable to them, in trying to prove to the world that Microsoft isn't really like Microsoft, but just some friendly techies who're like everybody else. So I suppose they just let him bumble around and talk about whatever he feels like, as that's priceless advertising. Anyway, one of the things he said at reboot was:"I don't keep an email contact list anymore: all my friends are bloggers and if they are not, they will be soon, so I just google my friends, I just have to remember their name. This is why I put my email address and my mobile number on my home page. If I can't find out how to talk to you, it adds to much friction, I go find somebody else."
Hm, I can sort of see the point, but is that really meaningful? It isn't practical for everybody to just deal with the top 10 people of any given kind. Scoble is "Robert" #2 in Google. OK, I'm "Flemming" #2, although that's a bit easier. But, hey, all my friends aren't bloggers, and they aren't all at the top. A bunch of them are, but it just isn't mathematically possible, unless you only deal with the elite. And with people who don't have names like John Smith.
It is a good thought indeed that we ought to be able to search for what and who we need in real time, and a search engine should be able to give us the most relevant and up-to-date match. But if the criterion is merely that they all have to be in the top 10 out of millions, that doesn't work.
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