The Scoble Effect: Winners and Losers in the Attention Economy

Nick Carr raises an interesting point in the discussion of Robert Scoble's move from Microsoft to PodTech.net:

A company should probably be a little nervous about letting some blogger set up shop as its human face. The earnings the blogger pulls in through the attention economy may accrue more to his own bottom line than the firm's.

As Scoble himself has made clear, his move shouldn't reflect badly on Microsoft, which apparently tried hard to get him to stay. But the fact that there's been so much commentary critical of Microsoft in the wake of Scoble's move despite Scoble's own protests suggests that Carr's on to something.

We're paying a lot more attention to people, particularly to people speaking in "open, natural, uncontrived" voices (thank you, Cluetrain), and a lot less attention to companies striving to communicate with us via press releases and other degraded forms of marketing-speak. That's one reason why Scoble was so influential, and it was to Microsoft's credit that they saw the value of bringing him on board and turning him loose. But now that Scoble's gone, he's taking a lot of our attention with him. We'll hardly ignore Microsoft (or their network of 3,000 other bloggers), but Scoble's attention-getting ability made him a star that transcended the company's brand.

Is that reason enough for companies to heed Nick's cautionary advice? I don't think so--more than ever, companies will need people speaking in authentic voices to capture and maintain our attention, and that process will turn those people into stars. The real question is how a company finds the right balance so that our collective attention is divided between their stars and the company itself.

tags: attention attentiontrust attention+economy attention+data nick+carr robert+scoble scoble+effect microsoft