Robert scoble, known in the blogosphere as "the Sco-bleizer", is a phenomenon not just because he has had an unusually strange career of late, but because his example might mark the beginning of the end of "corporate communications" as we know it. Mr Scoble is, first, a blogger-ie, somebody who keeps an online journal (called a "web log" or "blog") to which he posts thoughts and web links several times a day. But Mr Scoble is also an employee of Microsoft, the world's largest software company, where he holds the official title of "technical evangelist". Those two roles are intertwined. It was his blogging prowess that led to his job, and much of the job consists of blogging. Mr Scoble seems to be worth his salary. He has become a minor celebrity among geeks worldwide, who read his blog religiously. Impressively, he has also succeeded where small armies of more conventional public-relations types have been failing abjectly for years: he has made Microsoft, with its history of monopolistic bullying, appear marginally but noticeably less evil to the outside world, and especially to the independent software developers that are his core audience. Bosses and PR people at other companies are taking note.
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