After just a year and a half with PodTech.net, reports are surfacing that celebrity A-list blogger and author of Naked Conversations Robert Scoble is leaving the company next month. As a result, he’s really been taking his lumps from other A-listers.
TechCrunch reported Scoble’s impending exodus, and that he will be heading for business magazine Fast Company. A commentator in the TechCrunch thread claiming to be Robert Scoble confirms he is leaving on January 15, but hasn’t finalized his next place of employment.
Of course, another commentator by the name of Robert Scoble says he’ll be joining up with Fat Camp to set up Fat Camp TV, so take it for what it’s worth.
Though he hasn’t responded on his blog, Scoble, who’s currently in Paris, did confirm via Twitter before announcing his general lack of availability. “It’s true,” he tweets, “I’m at PodTech until January 14, 2008. After that? The deal hasn’t been signed yet, so we’ll announce it on January 15th.”
Scoble also denied PodTech was financial trouble, as reported at TechCrunch.
Detractors are quick to note (or, dig in) that this is a much different tune than Scoble sang both in August and late October. In response to late summer rumors that PodTech was “a shitbag salad” and that he was leaving, Scoble, rather bluntly, denied both.
In October, Scoble denied both again, this time taking direct issue with the Fake Steve Jobs (Forbes editor Daniel Lyons) reporting that “Scoble was planning to bail in January” and that PodTech was failing.
“This is total, 100% bull####,” Scoble wrote. “Not even deserving of a response. I’m not leaving PodTech. When, er if, I am you’ll read it here on my blog.”
Lyons, er, Fake Steve, was quick to hop on the told-you-so bandwagon, and to suggest that Scoble doesn’t follow his own advice about “radical transparency” in blogging:
“Come on, Robert. Walk the walk, baby. Be transparent. Stand naked before us. Tell us who’s offering what. Show us the term sheets. What’s that? You’re shy all of a sudden?”
Ouch. Well, I guess we’ll all find out in January.
