"I love Microsoft and Microsoft did not lose me," protested Robert Scoble, a little too loudly, on his blog last week, in a bid to end feverish speculation in the blogosphere about why, exactly, he had decided to leave Microsoft. The software giant’s "technical evangelist", Mr. Scoble has become the best-known example of a corporate blogger. On his blog, called Scobleizer, which he started in 2000, he writes about Microsoft’s products, and has sometimes criticised them fiercely—thereby both establishing his credibility and, by its willingness to tolerate him, helping to humanise his employer.
As blogging’s influence has grown, so bas Mr. Scoble’s—both inside and outside Microsoft. Last year, after he blogged against Microsoft’s decision to abandon support for a law prohibiting discrimination against gays, the company’s managers backed down. He helped write a book, Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing the Way Businesses Talk With Customers, published in January, that has become essential reading for any boss trying to define a new-media strategy for his business.
So why leave Mr. Scoble has denied several of the theories circulating in the blogosphere, including that he had become fed up with having his expenses challenged or with sharing an office; that Microsoft challenged his views too often; that he had become, frustrated; and that the firm had not tried hard enough to keep him. Still, his friend Dave Winer, another blogger, described Microsoft as a "stifling organisation" before observing that "when he finally decided to leave, it’s as if a huge weight came off him, and all of a sudden, the old Scoble is back." He views Mr. Scoble’s departure as evidence that Microsoft has been unable to move with the times: "I’m glad to see my old friend didn’t go down with the ship." Another blogger says that his departure shows the "end of honest blogging."
The real reason may be less sinister—though troubling for the growing number of employers encouraging their employees to biog. Blogging allows staff to build a personal brand separate from that of their firm; if they are good at it, and build up a readership, that brand may be more valuable to them elsewhere. Mr. Scoble is off to join PodTech. net, a rising star in video podcasting, which is now far more fashionable than blogging and potentially far more lucrative. It seems that Mr. Scoble is most impressed by Rocketboom, one of whose founders, Amanda Congdon, is said to be drawing 300000 viewers a day to her videoblog, and is about to start charging advertisers $85000 a week—almost as much, Mr. Scoble is reported as saying, "as I made in an entire year working at Microsoft.\
The word "sinister" (Line 1, Para. 4) most probably means