The Steve Rubel Stream

I agree that there can be thought leaders without blogging. However, if you are a thought leader for the social media marketing industry, I think you really do need a blog. Blogging is one of the most important things for those using social media for business. Good thought leaders will tell people this. If you tell people this and don't have a blog, you aren't practicing what you preach. No one ever responds well to that. If you are a social media marketing thought leader and you do not advocate having a blog for business, then you may not be a good leader.

does a duck have lips?

ps. another drawback of Posterous: the twitter auto-share option doesn't link back to your post or tweet. instead, it re-direct viewers to their home page.

Ok. I just realized the origin of this topic. Steve Rubel has decided to stop blogging. That means I kind of just said in my comment that he might not be a good leader. Now, I'm not sure that was a fair statement. While I disagree on that one topic, I do know he is in general a great thought leader.

I understand moving on to the next evolution of social media. However, I'm not clear on what he feels is taking the place of blogging.

If this is indeed about Steve's decision to switch to posterous then I think the conversation needs to be more specific.

I don't necessarily consider using posterous as your platform of choice as "not having a blog".

Blogging is still in it's infancy and to think that we have seen all of it's maturations and evolutions is silly.

Stupid question but not as hopeless as the comments.

You don't need to call it a blog or blogging, but you do need to put out thoughtfull content, often done in a style that looks like a blog. Steve may not think he is blogging, but I see this content stream as blogging. Now if only posterous had the same functionality for reader as his "blogging" site did.

The more I think about it, the more I think that what Steve is giving up in this move is the Moveable Type platform in favor of Posterous. This is still a blog, even if it is titled a life stream.

Posterous seems to me to simply offer a variety of ways to get content into a variety of systems with a bit of automation to go along with it (for pictures and videos etc). At the end of the day though, IMHO this is still just a blog.

I do think it is hard to be a thought leader without some sort of blog, because it is through that blog that you build up your reputation with other thought leaders and peers. I think it is difficult to beat the static nature of a blog (or Posterous) post when it comes to sharing and linking information. FF and Twitter are too fast, its easy to miss the conversations if you step away for a while and it is still complicated to setup searches that help you dig through the mass of information. The average person, and perhaps even the average thought leader, will miss most of the conversation if it is scattered across FF, Twitter, a blog, Facebook and who knows where else.

If you look closely at the top, there's a link to: return to blog.

If you look closely at the top, there's a link that says "back to blog".
How appropriate

I think you can, but need to be smart about how to spread your opinions, where, when and how to make your network

There ARE hundreds of thought leaders without blog. But "thought leaders about Internet" without blog, there are many less. But what you have a blog. This one.

Steve, bold move, a lot of people in Spain have heard you and are entering the posterous world.

Amusing that this is a discussion by Scoble (who made his name blogging) spurred most likely by Steve's recent lifestream change (another person who gathered a following by blogging). Those who answer this in the affirmative need to show people who are thought leaders in the web space who don't blog and have never done so. No fair gathering thousands of followers via a blog, then saying you don't need to blog to become influential.

IFRAME support coming!

Writing is one of the keys to thought leadership, a blog is merely one of the many writing tools available

Blogs today are synonymous with independent thought. Working without a blog is like a carpenter who does not have a hammer.

its blogging for sure

thanks a lot

LOL - I would like to see that carpenter!

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