Scoble Scorns Fan

Top blogger disowns emulator.

One thing is certain. Harry Joiner, The Marketing Headhunter, respects Robert Scoble. And yes, Scoble is the world's prime business blogger but maybe Harry loves him just a little too much.

Consider this. Scoble said that Facebook is the new Rolodex. What does that mean to you? That you keep your entire Outlook Address Book on Facebook? That's obviously what Scoble meant. And as soon as he read that, Harry, like a little puppy, scrambled to get on board.

"If it's good enough for Scobie, it's good enough for me!" he cried as he pressed the button that would invite all of the 4600 people in his gmail address book to Facebook.

But all did not go well for Harry. Facebook immediately sent him a nasty little note saying that it had terminated his Facebook account -- forever. So, Harry started telling his friends. You know, the yappy ones. And soon his story was spreading far and wide. But what did Scoble, the instigator, do? He immediately tried to distance himself from his fan.

"This is spam behavior. If they allow it for him they have to allow it for the spammers. I’m glad they don’t allow you to do this. I have 4,200 contacts: each added one at a time."

Scobie, I like you too. But you should have had one of those "Kids, don't do this at home!" signs on your blog that day. Because if you advise an enthusiastic reader to make Facebook his new Rolodex, he's going to take you seriously. And unless you're a total rock star (like you) you don't create a Rolodex by waiting for people to link to you one at a time. That would be insane.

So come clean, big fella. Can't you accept a little responsibility for misleading your public and plead Harry's case in Facebook heaven? That would make us love you more. This kind of thing? Well one can hardly say it's your finest hour.

Jason Alba of JibberJobber.com is the guest on The Recruiting Animal Show on Wednesday. But if Scoble wants to take me on, I'll bump Jason faster than a cat can wink its eye.

Facebook Series: Scoble Scorns Recruiter.
Harry Strikes Back.
Facebook Declares War.
Facebook Bans Recruiter

Comments

[Marketing Recruiter]

Animal, you're nuts. I didn't mass-email my contact list because Scoble told me to. I did it because Facebook told me to. Scoble merely said that Facebook was the new Rolodex.

[Richard Becker]

Harry, I don't understand why would you want to emulate Robert Scoble anyway. Bill Gates wouldn't even be his friend on Facebook.

[Recruiting Animal]

Watch it Harry. You're heading into JD territory.

JD: You're nuts!
Animal: No, you're nuts!
JD: No I said you were nuts first!

Okay, Facebook told you to do it. But who started you on the road to ruin? Scoble. And his message was, implicitly, the same as Facebook's: Put your address book on FB.

And, really, only a moron would do that by waiting for people to find him there.

Of course, Scoble didn't have to invite anyone. People just came to him. But surely Scobie knows that he's kind of a special case.

I don't have an entry on Wikipedia. And, The Guardian newspaper, in England, didn't write about me when I left Recruiting.com. But when he changed jobs it was big news.

So, he has no business insisting, after the fact, that ordinary non-entities (like you, sorry) follow his advice to make Facebook their Rolodex by waiting passively for the invitations to come in. Please! Did you ever hear of Marie Antoinette?

[Bob]

I think there is more to this story than Harry is telling. I've talked to a lot of recruiters who have been "warned" first by Facebook. I'm one of them. There are people on Facebook who have more than 100,000 contacts. It wasn't the act of adding his address book that got him in trouble. I even checked with Facebook insiders and confirmed that he would not have been banished for inviting 4,500+ contacts. That might have taken a while (time wise), but would not have gotten him punted.

[Recruiting Animal]

Thanks Bobby for the investigative work. Anyone is capable of stretching the truth to help a story along but if I had to bet, I would say it's not the case with Harry.

[Richard Becker]

I would tend to agree. While I was not in town to cross post, I summed the situation this way:

"Since Joiner is not allowed on Facebook, what good is Facebook to me if he happens to be in my Rolodex, electronic or otherwise?"

Really, do I need a service that requires me to have yet another space for people it banned? If Bob is alluding to the idea Joiner was meant to be the example for the profession, they picked the wrong professional. I did overhear a teenager beaming about Facebook to her friend. "It's nicer than MySpace so mommy and daddy said it was okay!"

[Colin Kingsbury]

I think the whole point here (John Sumser IIRC write about this recently) is that Facebook may or may not have some consistent principles it follows but not firm and objective rules.

Firm and objective standards are in another context referred to as "the rule of law" and are arguably the fundamental building blocks of Western civilization, and even more so of all us descendants of English rule. Knowing that a contract will mean the same thing tomorrow that it says today allows both parties to plan for long terms and focus their attention elsewhere. Milton Friedman once observed that capitalism had worked out better in English-speaking nations than anywhere else and wondered why. A big part of that appears to be that English-speaking nations were also heavily influenced by English law with its tradition of very strong contracts.

Friedman also had a funny response to a critic who asked why mildly-socialist Sweden's per-capita GDP was higher than the US's. He responded that Swedes in America also made more money than the average American, and the average Swede (in Sweden).