Over the last few months my opinion of Guy Kawasaki has nosedived. First, the Bitpass debacle that to my knowledge he never addressed. Now this quasi-advice on blogging piece that starts with him joking about being Jackie Chan and talking about himself in the third person (”Guy’s golden touch”):

Used to think Kawasaki was a pretty cool guy and once upon a time was asked to read and comment on his book The Art of The Start at Blogcritics. Guy sent Blogcritics author copies. I’ve also had a pleasant email exchange with Guy on an error I noticed on his site in the past. He might have left a comment here too, I didn’t check.

Never met the man, but Kent Newsome’s excellent dissection of Kawasaki’s video interview with Jennifer Jones (above) and then his flippant comment response on Kent’s blog turned me off to the guy. Somebody needs to pop the gigantic balloon in his head.

Call me Hellraiser’s Pinhead, Guy, time to come back down from Candyego Land. You want to be in the top 10 at Technorati and yet you admit you are “too busy” to read other people’s blogs? Hey, no problem, you pretty much have guaranteed not getting another link from me. I’d encourage any blogger readers to watch the video interview above, read Kent’s post and then Guy’s comment response. Make up your own mind about the type of people you want to promote.

Just one of Kent’s observations:

I have been a reader of Guy’s blog since the day he started it. Part of me wants to unsubscribe after watching this interview. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I know this: if folks like me stop linking to Guy, he’ll never make the Technorati top 10.

Already unsubscribed here when I didn’t see Guy address why a company he supported was folding any unspent monies back into their failed venture. Why wasn’t this money refunded? Basically they quick claimed leftover monies that were not spent in their final hours. Read my post, it really was a despicable thing to do. It’s linked in the first sentence of this post and is far worse than anything Kawasaki said in his video. Jennifer Jones loses points for not asking Guy about the Bitpass situation. She can thank Kent for pointing me to this one because I probably wouldn’t have seen it otherwise.

You’d think Guy would understand this, Kent, but his comment reply in your comment section shows he doesn’t:

Let me get this straight: Because I’d rather be with my family, blog, answer email, start a new site, and play hockey than read feeds, I’m a bad person?

Ahh, playing the family card. He shoots but it rolls around and off the rim. No score. The game reference for where Guy seems to take joy in those he’s beating on the Technorati list.

I’ll bite, Guy: you are being a bad blogger for being unwilling to subscribe to and promote your peers and conversations. It’s like aspiring to be a top horror fiction writer and not reading horror fiction by your peers. Go ask Stephen King why he writes jacket blurbs. Does he do it purely for name recognition and to retain his #1 status or does he love horror fiction?

I don’t think Guy loves blogging. Now I’m seriously questioning his passion. Kent wasn’t saying you didn’t love your family. Lame bringing them into the equation.

He wants to be in the top ten of something without exploring what else is out there and being part of the conversation unless Guy Kawasaki’s name is mentioned. While I hesitate to define blogging — usually a fool’s errand — blogging isn’t about being in a bookseller type list. It’s at least partially about exploring different and sometimes better ways of communicating online. I’ve found blogging to be quite useful for getting the message out to people who refuse to listen or respond to other communication.

Come to think of it when I emailed Guy before, he responded. Maybe I should have sent this message to him in private? No, then I’d be depriving Kent Newsome peer respect and being able to be part of the conversation. I’m not surprised Guy misses this valuable part of blogging and is part of the top 100.

The Technorati list is somewhat meaningless anyway because I know of other sites in the top 100 that have less traffic than this one. This site’s Technorati rank? Well over 15,000 the last time I saw. Don’t be fooled by Technorati rankings nor Alexa rankings. Watch the traffic and comments, read and subscribe and link to other blogs. Don’t play Ego Gone Wild.

Guy Kawasaki’s blog tombstone should read: “You know what, I don’t read any blogs. Literally.”
Or maybe: “I love to read what people say … about me.”

Really, I only have one question for Guy Kawasaki. Why should we link to anything you’re doing, Guy, when your passion is purely self-motivated?

// public domain egocheck code
$guy_kawasaki_ego++;
$guy_kawasaki_reputation–;

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