Slashdot Mirror
Amazon CTO Rips Blogging Authors a New One
theodp writes "Following what was characterized as rude treatment of invited guests in a confrontation at Amazon HQ, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels turned to his personal blog to give author Shel Israel a public scolding for suggesting Amazon doesn't 'get' blogging (Amazon's blogging innovations include 'faux' personal blogs and patent-pending plogs). Vogels went on to voice concerns on Israel's blog that blogging could be too distracting for Amazon employees - think the self-proclaimed guy-with-guts challenged CEO Jeff Bezos about the distractions of his space exploration efforts?"
they also said that about cars, computers, video games, television, space flight, electric cars. all those are still around, and probably will be for as long as we are. I doubt blogging is going anywhere.
Classic slashdot. A ridiculously biased summary, and the last point is completely irrelevant to the subject.
Hell yeah! CTO doesnt 'get' blogging!
I wish more people were as blunt and forthcoming as Mr.Vogels.
What the hell is this about again?
More drama than a spanish soap opera. The only sad part is this lacks the good looking women and I can understand what they are saying...
This story reminds me of a saying, something about arguing on the internet being like running in the special olympics... I can't quite remember how it ends though.
This summary reads like the Chewbacca Defense.
Wow, am I the ONLY one here who can't make head or tail of what the text in that post says ? It's really confusing. Who did what to who and what happened then and where to who after what was done ? Mind clearing things up a bit ?
It's ironic that the guy himself has a blog, he's an Amazon employee and he publishes "Amazon employees shouldn't be blogging" diatribes on it. I mean, I myself think blogs are idiotic with rare exceptions, but his choosing of the medium is entertaining.
they also said that about cars, computers, video games, television, space flight, electric cars. all those are still around, and probably will be for as long as we are.
Of course, they also said that about the cravatte, off-white nylon shirts with huge collars, pet rocks, steam cars and listening to live plays via the telephone. And they were right.
That said, no, I don't think blogging is a fad either; it's too useful for that.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Explaining jokes on the internet is like competing in the special olympics...only retards do it.
It's Amazon's CTO. Who cares what he says on his personal blog? It's not like he runs the company or anything like that. Him getting in an argument with a blogger isn't even newsworthy! The terrible summary isn't helping this "article" along, either.
Being anonymous is not cowardice.
That said... it seems to be this is a classic case of mass-induced elitism. I don't think the Amazon guy was off in his line of questioning. What's good for Microsoft or Sun might not be for Amazon or eBay, yet Scoble and his friend come across as the quitenssential "it" boys, giggling and stomping their little feet because the hick across the table doesn't know what the small fork is for - as if his life depended on it.
I suppose if you live in that "blogosphere" long enough it must look to you like everyone is blogging and, more importantly, that everyone should be doing it. I don't think that's the case. I've found many corporate attempts at blogging to be underwhelming and downright stupid - if you don't "get it" then just don't do it at all. I doubt many millions of Amazon customers are going to decide one day that they won't spend a dime online anymore because Amazon doesn't have a blog.
The blogorati need to come out into the light and look around once in a while.
> Shaky camera work and giggling do not make a business case in most organizations.
Whereas shaky camera work and jiggling is a sure path to riches...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It would seem that if the Amazon guy doesn't want to kowtow to Mr. Israel (and why would he), the blogger guy is likely to wage some sort of blogger-jihad against Amazon.
Is that likely to cause them any trouble? Amazon seems to be quite good at what they do.
I have a feeling that this is a case where he can tell Israel to kiss his ass.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
I'm not sure if I'm referring to the meeting in the story or the post on Slashdot, either...
That is all.
I read all the trackbacks and comments linked and basically it reads like a polite version of a forum flamewar. You can actually almost see that behind their carefully creafted words they really at heart want to write something like "OMG ur teh gay!". If this is what 2 "blogging poster boys" and the CTO of one of the most high profile online retailers do with their blogs then I think Amazon and anyone else would do well to stay as far clear of them as they can.
I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this post is too small to contain.
Game Overdrive - Gaming News
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Probably around the same time they get a Chief Chair-throwing Officer.
... wait a minute, I think I'm wrong - most companies already have a Chairman.)
(Hmm
And where will they be saying that?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
From one click purchasing to one dick blogging, is there anything Amazon doesn't have patents on?
Over their streaming wifi bluetooth podcast-based real-time worldwide virtual reality broadcasts on their iPodMacroVRGPSHDDVDIPv6B2B's with optional ...
Ouch, now my brain hurts. Who can think of something to finish this off with?
I have to stop wasting so much time reading Slashdot. It's interfering with my crystal meth addiction.
Sypnopsis:
Mommy, the fucker's been rude to me. He a bitch. Bitch. No, you a stupid bitch... Who's the bitch? Shut up, they're all bitches. Bitches.
You're not the only one.
Looks like you mispelled "ghey".
If you follow that link for "plogs" they go on to describe RSS feeds, as currently used in ALL BLOGGING SITES/PROGRAMS to allow inter-blog connectivity, and management therein (LiveJournal calls it syndication/etc.). Yet again idiots are attempting to patent something that was already in wide use when they "thought it up".
Two "important" bloggers go to Amazon, guys at Amazon act like jerks because they want to "test" them, everyone blogs about it instead of discussing their problems with each other.
:-/
The "whocares" tag is pretty accurate, but I did find it somewhat interesting... like soap opera interesting.
s/were/we're/gc :wq!
^Y
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
And really love some good flamewar action. So I saw "rips a new one" and was geared up for one hell of a great story.
Boy, was I wrong. I need to update my definition for that phrase.
Drama drama drama blog drama drama Amazon drama blog smug smug drama blog Amazon smung drama blah.
Why is this news we give a flying leap about?
Having been in business (finance) for 15 years, I have been in a similar position to the CTO on occasion. The world is full of armchair quarterbacks, who are able to scratch a living in journalism and from writing books. Some of these people have real insights, some are just cobbling together platitudes on fashionable subjects. By and large, I tend to discount people who sell opinions on any subject, if they have never tried to make a living out of the implications of that opinion.
My feeling is that this CTO is in the position that well-meaning people are happily giving him advice all the time about what Amazon should be doing. He has limited resources in terms of time and money, so he needs a well-primed bullshit filter to make sure that he's not wasting his time. The first thing you do when talking to a consultant is to establish their bona fides, and to test them on the basis for their recommendations. You can start to believe their general statements, when you can see that their conclusions are based on real research and not thought experiments.
When someone is using the phrase "you just don't get (whatever subject)" I counter that it's up to them to convince me. There were lots of people putting crazy valuations on internet stocks in the late 90s. When you asked them how they justified the valuations, they would come up with over-optimistic projections about the amount of money that could be made from the net. Often they would assume that one company's revenues would be greater than the entire spending on that product category. Eventually the conversation would get to a stage where it was clear that they had no data to support their hypotheses, and they would wheel out the phrase "you just don't get it".
They could just as easily have said "oh ye of little faith". That's appropriate in a religious setting, but not where my clients' money is concerned. It's also my experience that people who have faith in irrational things tend to view any aggressive questioning as rude. I remember one of my analysts getting very upset when it was pointed out to her that her opinion on a particular company was at odds with her own facts - her only defence was to scream at me for being rude. Often if people have no real counter-arguments, they react to bad news and criticism by criticising the way it was delivered.
is your friend
<br
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
In the lab where I work, we call that position "Senior Throwing Chairman"
Navicula hydraulica plena anguilarum est. Omnes castelli tuus nostri sunt. Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
1. Amazon is a serious company that's about "Getting Work Done", not the very vague "Getting It", which is about the same as "Being In". Seeing that Amazon is a successful dotcom for years, I say they 'Get It'
2. Bloggers want to whine, preferably for money, and think everyone should love them, and be and think the same. You can blog about what you want, just pretend it's the greatest thing in the world.
The whole blogosphere is nothing more than a bunch of self-basting ego-fornicators.
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
...and Amazon customers clean their old ones. On the cheap too.
C-x C-s C-x k
That's hypocrisy, not irony.
So these guys think that Amazon doesn't "get" blogging. Well, what if Amazon does get it And Mr. Israel and others are the ones who don't? And what is this "rude treatment" I hear? The guys went to Amazon to talk about blogging. And they were asked some hard questions. Is that "rudeness"? No it's not. It seems to me that the complainers are thinking that "we are mighty blog-experts, and everything we say is gold. Asking us questions is rude and if you disagree with us, then you do not "get" blogging, since we are the final authority in all things related to blogging".
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
What is blogging all about? Whining, Soapboxing, Browbeating. None of these activities are particularly useful, especially on the company dime.
Buddy Holly dies = the day the music died
Blog becomes a nauseating, overused word = the day the internet died
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
As a diary, it's nothing new (though you no longer need to sneak into your sister's room to find out that she got drunk and fucked five guys last night).
As a corporate communication mechanism, it is something new.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Amazon invites a couple of people to speak about corporate blogging, that being the general idea of having your own employees have blogs to talk about the company. Amazon CTO asks them some pointed questions during the presentation, which CTO considers to be rather obvious questions. The speakers are unable to answer his questions in an adequete manner, and consider the CTO to be "rude", as do some others at the presentation. CTO counters by saying that he didn't mean to be "rude", but felt that the presentation was just fluff and "ra-ra-ra" type of cheerleading. And then everybody blogs about it complaining back and forth.
If you care, then pick a side and argue it.
If you don't care, then you're 99.9999% of the population.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Yeah, it was kinda like a train crash.
I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this post is too small to contain.
Of course, this was only the second-best drama in the Blogosphere this week, running second to the scantily-clad Strumpette and her run-in with Edelman PR.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
All the trillions of therapists, counselors, web forums/chat boards, tv talk shows, cable shows, radio call in shows where we get to bitch, whine and generally engage in various forms of masturbation, are apparently not sufficient.
u ff.
We now need our employers to provide a soapbox, so we can engage in wanking at work on our blog in the two hours we dont spend on myspace/youtube/googlevideo/slashdot/heavy/fhm/st
it is a shame that scoble and israel can actually publish such fuzzy horseshit and be treated seriously.
With that many links to different stories, I couldn't tell which one actually WAS the story. Besides, by the time I got to the end of that deluge of dreck, I couldn't care less.
I was amused to see a story about me in a slashdot entry. Certainly I have some opinions on the Amazon blogging issue :-)
Here's my homepage (including my notes about the Seattle P-I article) and here's my blog entry about this. I'll continue revising it.
-ted (I left Amazon earlier this year)
A conversion list talking about Werner Vogel's recent post about Naked Answers. It is amazing to see so many bloggers are talking about it, including Scoblizer, Matthewingram, Rick Segal, etc.
Seriously,
I followed the links and cross links to articles, blog entries that quote other blog entries... what do I get? Something worse than a USENET flamewar because the conversation is logically scattered in multiple places.
AOL turned off their USENET gateways. USENET is usable again, right?
they also said that about cars, computers, video games, television, space flight, electric cars. all those are still around, and probably will be for as long as we are.
Of course, they also said that about the cravatte, off-white nylon shirts with huge collars, pet rocks, steam cars and
Hang on - I've still got my pet rock. He's a 4 kilo banded vein of barytes and galena from the Bellshill mine at Strontian. Nicely sectioned to show off the banding. Country rock of granodiorite on one facet.
Trust me on this - I'm a geologist - pet rocks are nice.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"