Robert Scoble

An Olympic-Sized Tech Tour.

Thanks to Paul Bunnell, technical architect on the London Olympic tech team for giving us a special tour of the Olympic "brain center."

This was in addition to the Facebook event this morning where they announced http://www.facebook.com/pages/olympics -- an aggregated page of a bunch of athlete and athletic pages together for the Olympics.

This is a massive effort, includes about 4,000 employees total, many of whom, like Paul, worked for three years on making the Olympic games happen. Here's a rare look at the tech center.

Facebook is ready for the Olympics: https://www.facebook.com/pages/olympics This is a major win for Facebook in its fight with Google and Twitter.

We are attending a Facebook press conference this morning where Facebook is announcing an Olympic partnership. More later but looks like Facebook is coming back against Twitter's branded events page in a big way. The game is afoot at https://Facebook.com/pages/Olympics

OK, this is a time when I'll double post. Why? Because Cory Booker makes me feel small.

Small? Yes, small. I have done so little with so much. My family gave me so much. I have not faced the challenges Booker's family has. I have not held the body of a dying child, the way Booker has. I have not helped a community the way he has.

We need more leaders like Cory.

This inspires me to do more. A must watch.

This is why I love social media and why Andrew Keen is gonna be at a disadvantage on Wednesday when we debate social media.

I doubt I would have seen this speech if it weren't for social media. Why? Because with it I followed Tina Seelig, who is a major leader at Stanford University and she said I must watch this speech, so I did.

In the old world would I have had a chance to see this speech? Nope.

But that takes me back to the point. I now feel small and feel I have to do more to help my community. Cory is just so inspiring, I wish we had more leaders like him and I wish the press would give more airtime to leaders like him. If they did this world sure would be better.

People keep asking me "are you still excited about Google+?" I tell them "has everyone stopped using search yet? If not, I'm still excited about Google+."

Here's a good example, for my brother Benny Scoble who runs a bar in Virginia, USA. Will a customer find him thanks to Google+'s new local features? It might happen, especially as more and more of his customers get Android phones or use Google search. Here's one restaurant we visited today for Father's Day in London. When I got back to the hotel I wrote up a review of the place and posted it there and on Yelp, too. Google's local features are quite good, by the way and integrated into Google+ quite well.

One thing I noticed, though, is that the restaurant had a "like us on Facebook" sticker on its window, even though its Facebook page at Cheminee Persian Restaurant isn't well done at all. I don't get why small business people advertise Facebook but then don't post photos of what they do.

Hanging out with Maryam's family in London today. Hope you are having a great Fathers' Day!

Happy father's day to my dad Bill Scoble, seen here with new-born Milan (one of my three great sons). Can't believe that's almost five years ago.

If you're a father, my hat is off to you!

Facebook's stock is on the rise. Was 26 the floor? I saw so much wrong stuff written about Facebook's future over the past month that it's laughable. Even yesterday, at Rackspace Hosting in UK, I was having lots of arguments with folks about what Facebook is and where it's going.

Everything I knew about Facebook eight months ago was wrong. It's not just for family and friend photos anymore the way it once was. Just add some interest lists and check those out to see how much it is changing: https://www.facebook.com/addlist and this is just a small part of the changes I've seen over the past eight months.

Oh, and congrats to Bret Taylor, Facebook's CTO, who announced he's leaving later this summer to work on a startup. I've been following Bret since he was one of the co-founders of FriendFeed and I can't wait to see what he does next. Job well done!