HW 16: The 5 Pillars of Conversational Software

Scoble discusses how blogging became hot, through his ideas on the five pillars of conversational software. The first pillar mentioned is called the "ease of publishing." What he is refering to in this case is that blogging is a very easy, and quick way of being able to express yourself. It doesnt take long at all to make a blog post and then publish it. The second pillar is "discoverability." In this case what Scoble means is that blogs are meant for the public to see and respond to, anyone can view these posts so when a blog is discovered and catches the interest of someone, it is very easy to keep an eye on it and follow the blogs consistantly. Is is a common way to be discovered by someone on the higher end of the business scale or even someone who you've always wanted to meet. The third pillar is called "cross site conversations." This aspect in my opinion means if someone else is reading a blog, other can find the same one more easily and have a conversation with you as well. Scoble states "I could see who was linking to me with trackbacks." In this case it allows for more than one conversation. The fourth pillar contains information about "permalinking," where you can easily take a URL that is known and this will take you directly to the page in which is being looked for. This is almost like making a general search for something by simply using a key word and this makes it easier to search for something of interest. The last pillar that Scoble discusses is about "Syndication." In this case im not quite sure exactly what this term means, but in my opinion it means he can respond and read whichever blogs he wants. The Five pillars is something that Scoble believes has made blogging hot.