It was reported on Friday by Michael Arrington over at Techcrunch that in the deal with Robert Scoble and FastCompany, that Robert had to allow Fast Company to monetize his weblog and give it an overall makeover. I know for a long time now Scoble has always protested about putting advertisements on his personal weblog and with good reason. However, this being sad, his weblog has great potential and really does need a make over at the very least. Im sure that with the relationship between Robert and Fast Company, Robert wont want to put obtrusive advertisements on his weblog and in the long run he will still be in total control of that property. I know im just going to be happy to see a new layout!
For a long time now I have been reading the web 2.0 news blog, Mashable. After reading Mashable for so long I have come to know the writers and their individual writing styles, but I have never understood why they are classed as “new media experts”, and what they might or might not have done before Mashable.
Founder/Co-Editor – Pete Cashmore: Pete calls himself a “new media expert”, but it is very difficult to work out what he actually has done in his career, except start Mashable. Nowhere on the web can i find a good profile of Pete or even more information, so if your reading this Pete please get in touch for a real interview!
Co-Editor – Adam Ostrow: Adam writes his own blog over at AdamOstrow.com. He has just become official editor of Mashable a few days ago. Adam seems to be the only Mashable staff member with some actual web startup experience. He has co-founded 2 startups, Mindsay and Qwizzy.
Lead Writer – Kristen Nicole: Kristen seems to write about 20 articles a day for Mashable. Im sure she wrote her own blog before this, but I cant find the link.
Writer – Stan Schroeder: Stan seems to have disappeared from the regular Mashable writing team. I have noticed he has been posting a few articles on his regular blog FranticIndustries, but Mashable hasn’t been on his radar.
Writer – Andy Angelos: Andy seems to be the new writer on the block. He has his own blog at AndyAngelos.com. Andy has a good deal of experience, he has worked with projects such as; VentureMidwest, Venture Capital Conferences and Inventables.
Compared to the other web 2.0 news sites out there, the Mashable team is quite inexperienced with actual startups and companies with relevance to their own interests. They just cant compare to Calacanis, Arrington and Scoble, who has just so much work experience. Arrington has an amazing team around his and Read/Write Web has started to grow their team also with very creditable staff, so Mashable it is very hard for anyone to take you seriously especially when you lack experience and credibility.
I have come across a very interesting article on Facebook Apps Monetization. It is from a panel at the Graphing Social Patterns and the panel includes, Michael Arrington (Techcrunch), Jason Calacanis (Netscape, Mahalo, Weblogs Inc) and Robert Scoble (Podtech).
A little off topic, Robert Scoble has posted a link to a very interesting analysis of Techcrunch’s linking history. 1/3 of Techcrunch links are to another Techcrunch site. Hmmm.
