While vacationing I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine. Basically he praised me for "turning around" on Robert Scoble and "realizing he's an idiot." I didn't know I'd "turned around" on anyone so I asked him what he meant. He then pointed me to a few critical things I'd written about Scoble in the last few weeks.
So for the record, I don't "hate" Scoble. In fact, I still admire a lot of what he has done. I think he can be an idiot...a huge idiot...a great deal of the time. But that's just who he is. If the entire blogosphere were like me it wouldn't be very interesting.
Which brings me to the controversy of the weekend where Scoble has been receiving a lot of hate for saying the startups presenting at the Demo conference have web sites that "suck" in his opinion. An opinion that has garnered him several attacks.
To those attackers I'd point out that Scoble represents how a lot of people think. You can think all those people are idiots but that doesn't change the fact that they're out there and that they have an opinion.
So when Scoble says these sites "suck" he's representing what a lot of people are going to think about them. Knowing that is valuable. Regardless of whether you agree with him.
Bottom Line: You can berate people into shutting up but that isn't going to change the way they think and knowing what they are thinking is of some value.
I have to ask all those attacking him, what exactly do you think you're accomplishing? He's not going to say he's wrong because its personal opinion. It isn't like there's a conclusive way to prove that a site doesn't suck and knowing what he thinks allows the startups to take that criticism into account.
As far as the Startups themselves are concerned, I feel for them. It hurts to be told your hard work "sucked" in someone's eyes. But I consider the value of hearing that person's opinion and knowing people like that are thinking it far out weighs the pain of hearing it.
The most important rule a startup needs to learn is to take criticism and use it.