Scoble is bringing Zooomr back!?

None of Zooomrs problems would be this public if they had not announced a release that they didn't know they could deliver.  Sure hardware failures got them in the end, but if they had done the work and *then* announced a new version ...

.. of course no PR is bad PR.

[sarcasm]

Yeah it is possible. He is the MAN. He was named one of the Top100 influential persons by time and a search for robert in google returns his website first. He is also credited with increasing the readership of channel9 from zero to 4 million. But right now channel9 has just got 4 people after he has left.

[/sarcasm]

I wonder how long before he reminisces about his experiences on his blog, or uses his selective memory to rebut one of the frequent comments doubting his experience and technology credibility...

e.g.

"... when *I* was rebuilding a major web 2.0 environment overnight..." or something along those lines.

as opposed to

"... when I was sitting in a corner eating doughnuts and twittering in a chat room..."

Just read another post and I have to say this guy needs some reality check.

scoble wrote:

The other thing this demonstrates is that the most engaged audiences are now using Google Reader. What do I mean by “engaged?” People who are willing to do something. Click a link. Leave a comment. Buy. Etc.

Engaged audiences are the ones that advertisers and big companies are looking to reach.

Is Google sitting on a gold mine? My referer logs say yes.

Does he even understand that most of his userbase are tech users. Hello scoble are you awake??? And I never click on those stupid ads or on the sponsored websites. How can he say most people who are willing to click a link and comment will buy??

Companies and advertisers are looking for ignorant people not for the engaged user who tries to surf and discover things.  I am not sure how many of you guys would walk into a store and buy a computer for 1000$. I would not and many geeks I know would not. They would rather browse, research, probably look for some nice deals on rfd (canada) or slickdeals(US) and then buy.

The impulsive buyers are 99.999% ignorant and/or have so much money in their bank.

He is sounding more and more like FOX and CNN news.

It's not unprecedented:

Justin is Bringing Sexy Back

Laura is Bringing Xbox Back

Zooomr isn't back yet...

I know Kristopher, hung-out with him at the Yahoo Hack day and at CES he and Thomas hung-out in the BlogHaus along with Robert and many of the C9 Team.

I'm a Zooomr user and while at the BlogHaus their server went down and the photos on my blog went blank. I didn't have to send an email or call for Tech support, I just turned to Kristopher and said WTF is going on here!!!!

 

Just because someone isn't doing the technical side doesn't mean what they're doing isn't important. Not just talking Scoble, but if you're ever in the process of recovering from a failure always, and I mean always, give credit to those who bring you drinks, run you around, keep everyone else off your back, and generally make it so you can focus only on doing the recovery. Otherwise they won't be there next time...

pftqg wrote:

Just because someone isn't doing the technical side doesn't mean what they're doing isn't important. Not just talking Scoble, but if you're ever in the process of recovering from a failure always, and I mean always, give credit to those who bring you drinks, run you around, keep everyone else off your back, and generally make it so you can focus only on doing the recovery. Otherwise they won't be there next time...

QFT

The support team makes the job possible in the first place. The others complete the job. Both groups of people are equally vital.

Their back.....

I'm not expert but I've been in enough start-ups to know what works and what doesn't as pretty much all the start-ups I've worked have failed.

When you are a small start-up it's vitally important to protect your business and not make compromises on things that are the back-bone of your business.

So protecting your business critical servers with a backup regime and SLA's. Ok, so this is crying after spilt milk but being in business is about looking after your business not just executing a good idea that makes cash. It's not expense to look after your business it just takes dedication and sometime this means doing stuff that isn't core to your business and often isn't very interesting ... but that's business!

The truth is that businesses do fail, no matter how neat the idea is, if it doesn't make enough money then something is wrong, either the idea or the execution. With Zooomr it could just be there time and no amount of help from Scoble and hint-Microsoft is going to save that.

If I was Microsoft I would be dead cautious about getting involved with them, sod the PR exercise, that would back-fire badly if the company still fails. Also Microsoft isn't a charity people have to remember that so they are not able to just give money away. Private individuals can have that luxury but a business like Microsoft will be duty bound by it's share-holders to weigh up the investment.

Ok so corps can do something like 'gestures of good will' but is Zooomr truly worth that, is there other companies or organisations that are more worthy?

I sense that Scoble has slight lost a bit of touch, perhaps it's all that Sunshine.

Robert put his rep-on-the-line and ZOHO and SUN came through for him.

What is Zoomr worth? 

Who will build the first Silverlight photo-share site?

It's back up.  http://beta.zooomr.com/