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Taking Heat for a Great Idea

Johnnie Moore's take on Scoble is definitely a bit fresher than the others comments .

Corporate deals with the "what is a blog supposed to be" ramifications.

Some immediate points on Scoble's letter and the comments afterwards:

1. Robert is a microsoftie in the same vein as the Excel 3.0 team : that is, we can create the best ________ possible. You know something? They can. The Fox team does it regularly (despite some comments posted on Channel nine's video). It's not arrogance - it's a challenge. I want my software to run on everyone's computer - I want everyone cool to be using my music player.... the fact that he works for the biggest software company doesn't mean it's going to work. It just means he's laying the challenge: build a "cool" media player. (and some people are responding)

2. Points should be given for anyone who is willing to write an open letter to his boss for everyone to see and also put the steps out there.

3. MS is going after two areas: the business world and the "cool" area. They own the business world but feel some pressure - they've never really made true in-roads in the "cool" area. Very few companies, other than Apple, have. I know Linux is all very good and exciting but come on make a user interface that CHANGES the way we work. "Cool" must be revolutionary not evolutionary and that's a hard step for a company as large as MS to make.

4. MS does have companies making media players - the problem is, it's a consumer market. As they've realized with the xBox, it's hard to be "cool" and make tons of money. Apple knows that -

5. People need to stop looking at companies based on their lawyers. Once a company starts relying on their lawyers for real basic things (like MS does), they need to take a step back. - Robert, this may be the place where you want to START telling BillG to work on. He gets technology - but someone is giving him really bad legal advice if he wants to play nice.

Corporate lawyers believe that everyone is bad, wanting to screw them. Most people don't - they want something that works and want to try it out to get it going right (this is what great customer service is all about). If you aren't happy with it, tell them and if you're reasonable, they will likely take it down.

In a nutshell, arrogant? Hardly - Scoble is throwing down the gauntlet to his own organization. The real issue with MS is whether or not their lawyers will allow anyone to do anything with it.

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