Scoble’s message to Gates

I think Robert’s on to something with his message in a bottle to Bill Gates. This is the thing that got me excited about blogging a few years ago, and the thing that got me excited about Podcasting a couple of weeks ago. The tools are there for anyone to create something and share it with the world, and the tools are there for all of us to consume what we want, when we want, how we want. This is the boat that MS is missing right now.

Let me share a personal story. As you know, whenever my wife and I go on vacation, we both wind up taking a lot of pictures and we end up each putting up different online photo albums. Angela doesn’t really understand my desire to keep our stuff separate, but I explained it to her this way the other evening. “You work in PR and communications. You get to be creative every day. I simply maintain the IT stuff at my work. Occasionally that gets a little creative, but not often, and it’s very rare that I actually get to share my creativity with anyone who cares. Putting up a collection of my own photos with my own captions, in my own way, gives me a visual creative outlet, just like blogging gives me a creative writing outlet. They are both my way of sharing myself with the world. Combining it with yours just wouldn’t be the same.”

This is what these tools allow for. For both individual expression and group collaboration on a level we’ve never seen before. And the important thing, from Bill’s perspective, is that we don’t care who makes the tools, they are just tools after all. The brand of tool you use won’t mean nearly as much as what you can do with the tools.

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