Ask HN: Was Scoble compensated for blogging on G+? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Was Scoble compensated for blogging on G+?

#11

Post by ameen » Mon, Jan 02, 2012, 6:59 AM UTC

BarkMore wrote: post #10

Scoble built his career around having an audience. Scoble is probably aware that preferential attachment plays a role in building an audience. Given this, Scoble had his own reasons for building an early audience on Google+. I don't know if Google compensated Scoble or others, but they probably didn't need to in Scoble's case. Scoble was very active on FriendFeed. I am pretty sure that FriendFeed did not compensate h…

This is definitely interesting. Building an audience even though it might be small enough (in the beginning) to pursue.

Re: Ask HN: Was Scoble compensated for blogging on G+?

#12

Post by ameen » Mon, Jan 02, 2012, 7:00 AM UTC

HistoryInAction wrote: post #8

According to Scoble on Quora, no: http://www.quora.com/Is-Google-paying-influential-users-like... His contract with Rackspace forbids him from doing such compensated work.

Thanks! That gives a lot of insight on a few doubts I had.

Re: Ask HN: Was Scoble compensated for blogging on G+?

#13

Post by ameen » Mon, Jan 02, 2012, 7:03 AM UTC

pace wrote: post #7

Though I am not a fan of Scoble I do not think that Google made Scoble and other to use the platform. Why? Two reasons: 1.) Scoble interest is to get traffic from everywhere. Raising awareness, brand recognition, etc. Google+ was skyrocketing at the beginning and for already known Internet celebs an opportunity to easily scale on another platform because at that time they were the first on Plus and quickly got tracti…

Agree. Although it was embarrassing for Google in the first few days of the beta that Mark Zuckerburg had the highest number of followers on Google+, without even a single post.

Re: Ask HN: Was Scoble compensated for blogging on G+?

#14

Post by ameen » Mon, Jan 02, 2012, 7:09 AM UTC

Buzzzz wrote: post #5

Scoble seems to be pretty open with such things so why just not ask him?

There always seems to be noise around the networks he's on. Also, this wasn't just about Scoble rather than having him as an example to try and understand Google+'s content strategy.

Re: Ask HN: Was Scoble compensated for blogging on G+?

#15

Post by ameen » Mon, Jan 02, 2012, 7:10 AM UTC

colinsidoti wrote: post #4

If I understand this correctly, a portion of Google employees' bonuses was tied to their success in social. I guess it's not a mandate, but it's certainly motivational. http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-page-just-tied-employee...

Wow. Didn't know about this. Sheds a new light on why Google employees blogged a lot on G+ whilst having their own personal blogs.

Re: Ask HN: Was Scoble compensated for blogging on G+?

#16

Post by ameen » Mon, Jan 02, 2012, 7:14 AM UTC

To clarify, I wanted to understand the aspirations (apart from the obvious needs of Google) of the G+ team when they set out to build a new social network. Apparently they've been focussing on public conversations and this is a niche that had been realtively ignored by incumbent social networks (Facebook/Twitter).

Also, Google+'s content strategy seems to have worked relatively well compared to Twitter's early days where everybody was posting what they had for lunch.

Re: Ask HN: Was Scoble compensated for blogging on G+?

#17

Post by wacheena » Mon, Jan 02, 2012, 5:35 PM UTC

ameen wrote: post #9

wacheena wrote: post #6

I worked at Google for a number of years during which time lots of products were coming out or ramping up. For instance, at the time Orket was Google's social strategy du jour. There was minimal (if any) pressure to use Orket over the burgeoning Facebook or aging MySpace at the time. When we ran internal experiments often we would use Google properties like Orket and/or other dog food. But it wasn't required. I belie…

Sorry for pointing this out, Orkut*. Also, a lot of things have changed since then with Larry at the helm. He is focussed on eradicating bloat (tons of Google products that were recently culled), and making sure whatever exists, succeeds. And the article that colinsidoti posted seems to have brought a paradigm shift to employee bonuses. Dog fooding is directly tied to your bonueses now. A financial motivator definite…

Orket = Orkut, further proof that there wasn't pressure to use it!

Re: Ask HN: Was Scoble compensated for blogging on G+?

#18

Post by samstave » Mon, Jan 02, 2012, 7:03 PM UTC

I ended up having to unfollow him because he was basically spamming my feed.

I used G+ for maybe a few weeks - but I havent looked at it in months. I dont facebook either... I jsut dont get any personal value from social networks.

The only thing I need is a dead simple way to get my pics from my phone into an online gallery.

The G+ iOS app has NEVER once allowed me to upload a pic. I have 1600 pics on this iPhone - and 5000+ on disk from my older phones....

I just reinstalled path again - maybe this is what I am looking for.

I already have reddit, HN, verge, quora, SO to take up my time - the last thing I need is to read scoble constantly.