Developers: Why You May Not Want To Listen To Robert Scoble
I love Scoble. I really do. He's a great source of content, and occasionally controversy. In a post today, he suggests that developers should build for Android tablets. I am left a little confused as to his overall logic train, so let's poke at a few of his points.
Context & Ripple Effects
Robert Scoble has been handing down platform verdicts for years — he ran the same exercise for smartphones back in November 2009, asking readers which phone platform deserved their code — and today he applied the format to tablets, urging developers to build for Android. Within hours, Many Niches published a point-by-point takedown arguing his logic doesn't hold together.
The pushback lands on receptive ground. Critics have questioned Scoble's technical judgment before — IT Project Failures argued in December 2007 that he didn't understand enterprise software — and his own November 2010 post on how Apple iPhone apps take off implicitly framed the App Store as the proven market. With the iPhone-vs-Android fan war dominating discussion since late 2010, and rumors circulating of Android 'exploding' in 2011, tablet platform choice is the most contested developer question of the moment.
First-order effects
- Developers weighing a first Android tablet app get a same-day counterargument to Scoble's endorsement, forcing the decision to be made on install-base and monetization evidence rather than one blogger's enthusiasm.
- Scoble's advice now competes with his own prior framing: his November 2010 piece on how iPhone apps take off treated Apple's ecosystem as the working model, giving skeptics an internal inconsistency to cite.
Second-order effects
- High-profile platform advocacy now invites immediate public rebuttal, raising the cost of unqualified recommendations and pushing other commentators to hedge or cite data before taking sides.
- The dispute sharpens the developer-resource allocation debate: agencies and indie shops watching the exchange must decide whether early Android tablet effort is a land grab or a distraction while iPad owns the installed base.
Third-order effects
- If prominent individual evangelists keep getting picked apart in public, developer guidance migrates toward aggregate community signals and sales data, eroding the influence of single-voice platform endorsements.
- The episode feeds the longer-running question Scoble himself raised in 2010 — whether the tech press still shapes outcomes — by demonstrating that its most-followed voices can be contradicted and discounted within a news cycle.
The trend: Mobile platform advocacy by high-profile bloggers is meeting same-day public rebuttal, as developer platform choice becomes the most litigated question of the 2011 tablet wars.