Joi Ito is one person I look up to. Last night we were talking on ICQ and he said something interesting "I wouldn't consider the NEC Tablet if it weren't for you talking about it." After which he added something like: I wouldn't trust NEC's marketing people.
Now, you gotta consider something. Joi hangs out with the guy who runs Sony. He knows lots of people at NEC too. He's a Japanese journalist. He's going to Davos in a few days. He hangs out with all sorts of interesting people, both here in the US and in Japan. But what caught my attention is that he implied that he doesn't trust sleazy marketing or salespeople. Huh? Don't you realize I'm a marketing/salesperson? So, what's different?
I weblog. That's the epiphany? No. Joi and I are in a relationship. He knows I'm gonna post on my weblog every few days. He's met me at a weblogger dinner. He knows that he can send a bunch of his friends (Dave, Doc, Dan, etc) to beat me up if I lie to him. I know that too, so I always try to tell it like it is.
Now I really understand what Doc is talking about when he and David Weinberger says "Markets are conversations." If you write every day, people will start to get to know you and start to trust you and what you say. Yesterday, another person I have known for a long time, Joe Rotello, told me that I'm the only person at NEC he knows. So, for him, I'm representing a 100,000 employee organization. Isn't that a mind bender? Oh, Joe's been around the block. He's written for all sorts of publications.
Another email that I received yesterday told me "I'm considering the NEC only because of the support you're giving to the news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.windows.tabletpc newsgroup" (I'm the only representative of any major OEM that shows up there to answer questions)
Which gets me to the whole point of this ego-stroking exercise: I love NNTP.
Weblogs are cool, but I could spend hours talking to people in NNTP newsgroups. Unfortunately most people don't find out about NNTP newsgroups. They don't know there are groups for nearly every product and every human endeavor. During my divorce the alt.support.divorce newsgroup really helped me out a lot (that's on Usenet).
Yeah, there are problems with NNTP. You have your flamers. Your whiners. The folks who come in and don't read any of the old messages. But, for some things, I still haven't found a better way to have a conversation with another group of humans.
Oh, yes, many have tried to build Web-based communities (mostly so they can put advertising into the messages -- NNTP isn't a good format for advertising-supported communities) but alas, none have come up with something as nice and as easy as the NNTP format. [The Scobleizer Weblog]
1:54:06 PM 
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