Scoble is movin’ and the blogosphere is shakin’

I came back to my hotel room late last night from a fantastic dinner with great company (thanks again Will) and crashed before checking my feeds. What a tidal wave! The news about Robert moving to PodTech.net has completely taken over Memeorandum (and temporarily crashed PodTech’s servers because of the traffic)!

What I find almost hilarious is that Robert’s move has leaked as a rumor that the tech bloggers have immediately jumped on (“Rumor”, ”might”, ”may”, ”will”, ”is going to”, ”50%”, ”100%”), before Robert and John had actually crafted their announcement:

I looked at my cell phone and I think there was a call from Om Malik that I ignored (sorry, Om, I didn’t know you were calling about THAT). Then the email started coming in. Oh, crud. It was out.

It also means that the reasons and circumstances of Robert’s leaving were subjects to rumors and supputations, so much so that Robert had to counter most of them in Correcting the Record about Microsoft.

I don’t think that Microsoft is going to suffer the setbacks that some posts are predicting, first because the changes that Robert and the other 3000 bloggers of the company have helped kick in gear are already under way, and second because other bloggers (like Niall Kennedy, yes buddy, yours to fill the gap now) have an opportunity to make a similar impact.

I just spoke to Robert for a few minutes ago to congratulate him and Maryam for the move, and I need to do did the same with John who has scored yet another coup by luring the most well known corporate blogger to his startup. I look forward to hearing more about Robert’s new role at PodTech, but what is clear is that he will contribute to getting podcasting, and I would bet video-blogging, to its next milestone, using his footprint in the both the corporate and consumer worlds to evangelize it.

There will be more news coming in the next few days, especially since we only heard one side of the story (cryptic statement that will make sense later this week). And I can’t wait for the leaving party (or parties) that will take place around Gnomedex since Robert’s official starting date is July 1st.

Update: Dan Farber reports on
his meeting both Robert and John at Vloggercon.