WHO ARE THESE GEEKS???

I have been a tech guy since the internet was only being used by companies like Prodigy and AOL. In the past 5 years, I have become a much heavier user of the internet.

I run 4 blogs, one company website, I have developed three other sites for other companies, I am on myspace, facebook, pandora, youtube, metacafe, twitter, friendfeed, loopt, twitterberry, and so much more that it makes my head hurts.

If there is one thing I have learned is that everyone on the net is fighting for attention saying "look at me. look at me". You have no idea of the different types of people there are.

Let's review a few. I may get some of the details wrong on some of these people, but you'll get the jist. Also, Please remember that this is strictly my opinion.



Kevin Rose - Although Kevin is probably the least selfish of the bunch and most successful, I must say I feel opposite about his site. Kevin developed Digg.com. You may not know digg, but every liberal 19 year old male does. They have huge traffic and yet no one in the real world of business knows who they are. Kevin comes across as a nice guy, but his website is very anti-Microsoft, Walmart, Religion, Bush, and Macs. So trying to get an unbiased view of the world is pretty hard, since the lunatics run the assylum at Digg.



Robert Scoble - Not sure what this guy does. He is always writing on twitter and friendfeed and yet never has much to say. He's managing director for FastCompany.tv. I have subscribed to FastCompany for about 10 years and never heard of FastCompany.tv until I came across Robert. He has loads of time to text things 24 hours a day and he is always posting picks on Flikr, which means he can't have time to do any real work.



Michael Arrington - He is the creator of TechCrunch.com which is truly one of the few and best places to get the latest info on technology. I subscribe to his newsletter. In that newsletter Mike is always talking like he is the biggest man in the business. People throw products at him for free or even pay him to review their stuff. Sometimes it crosses the line and he starts pushing his own interests. He has many subscribers. He is his biggest fan.

I don't know what's more pathetic. People tracking down Mike Arrington (TechCrunch) and pitching their company's website or the fact that Mike shows it to the world and makes fun of the guy. The worst part is that Mike held the meeting with this guy in his kitchen.



Jason Calacanis - here is someone I don't even know. He supposedly is a successful blogger, whatever that means. He has since gone public about stopping his blogging profession and only write a newletter to a private few. He will only allow 750 people on his private newsletter. He claims it isn't a publicity stunt and yet over the past few days he has changed the subscriber limit twice. First it was 750, then 1000. Now anyone can sign up with his approval, which is fully automated. Wow. How elite do I feel being on that list. And to make things worse, I get his email hoping for some intellectual conversation and it's nothing but a bunch of plugs for him, his interview on the web after the Batman movie, and other things he is so wonderfully doing.



Andy Beal - I just read about this guy for the first time today. His tag line about himself is "co-author of Radically Transparent: monitoring and managing reputations online." I didn't know there was a market for this. I have never heard of this book, if it really is a book. They write it like everyone knows it. What does a co-author do, anyway? This guy also has his own workshop based on the book. Wow.

Andy was the last straw in this self serving imaginary celebrity cluster. These guys are their own biggest fans and it shows in their writing. They might not realize it, but their little bit of a fan base has gone to their heads.

It reminds me of the unsigned bands that were on MP3.com back in the day.

These bands were the hottest bands on MP3.com. They had over 300,000 fans. The only problem was no one IN THE REAL WORLD knew who they were. It was a make believe world at MP3.com and I am starting to believe the same fate will come to most of the above mentioned names.

I guess the reason for my post is this. It's easy to get a website, send a few twitter messages, post video on the net, and say your someone big. Let's not glorify these guys more than they are already doing to themselves. Take what they have to offer. Tell them thank you and move on. Don't be a follower.