When Robert Scoble was here in Israel a couple of months ago he interviewed me about the Israeli startup scene. Here’s the result:

Unless somehow you’ve managed to miss it, Robert Scoble posted 3 provoking videos about why he believes Social Graph Based Search will kill Google.

Personally, I believe Scoble is dead wrong. But I won’t get into why. Here’s why… What I found absolutely fascinating was not Scoble’s theory. It was the Scoble Discussion Effect. Here’s what I mean:

• The Videos Themselves: Scoble taped himself and the output is unarguably–amateurish. The angle is terrible and the articulation is clearly unrehearsed. Unless you know Scoble you could easily expect the videos to go Gonzo-porn at any given point.
  
  BUT: No one cares! No one cared for the quality of the vids… Thousands of people watched based on the quality of the arguments!

• Conversation: When I watched the vids, the Kyte.tv real-time chat was on. Over 300 hundred people were watching while I was and dozens were chatting about Scoble’s arguments in real-time.

• Transparency: In his first follow-up post, Scoble shared the negative criticism. In my opinion this isn’t Scoble trying to be “noble”, rather this is Scoble doing what should be done. That is, commending the counter-arguments and letting them stir round 2-X of the debate.

Regardless of his Social Graph arguments, Scoble is a pioneer who is literally creating the new rules of conversation engagement. And for that he should be respected.

(But he’s still dead wrong about Social Graphs).

When I was a kid, my dad worked for legendary Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), which back in the day was #2 to IBM. In the 80’s the computer business was about selling machines, and no one could outsell IBM.

Then in the 90’s, in one of the most important business plays in hi-tech industry history, IBM reinvented itself and became a services company. This was not an obvious move, but one that proved cynics and critics wrong alike.

This preface brings me to Amazon. Slowly but surely the Internet retailer has been rolling out Web Services. These are services that capitalize on Amazon’s advanced infrastructure–and it is advanced. It began with the Simple Storage Solution (S3), continued to Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), and has now reached Flexible Payment Service (FPS).

In the two days since the service was announced a question has been recurring in my mind… Is Amazon the next IBM? Your thoughts are welcome…

Interesting coverage:

• TechCrunch
• Robert Scoble