A revolution called blogging

By Ahmed Faiyaz

Blogs and BloggingChoose one of the following options: Technology has improved my life; it sets me free. Or, technology has harmed my quality of life; it enslaves me. Chances are you may want to reply, "All of the above." In recent years, the Internet itself has been evolving as weblogs or blogs become more and more of a trusted social medium. Blogging is a tool for users as they try to deal with a changing technology landscape where the problem is no longer how to get more information from one person to another but how to constrain that flood of information, how to deliver and receive more meaningful and contextual information for you and your business.
Typically, a blog (a contraction of Weblog) is created with easy-to-use software that streamlines the process of creating and updating a professional-looking Web page, giving users a low-cost platform from which to express their thoughts on a particular subject. Written material made available on a blog is called a post and can be linked easily to other information on the Web, such as other blogs, a company Web site, news articles, photo images, or video and audio files. This allows information on a blog to be indexed and swiftly accessed by popular search engines such as Google or Yahoo and disseminated far more quickly—and, in some instances, far more prominently—than other, more traditional forms of corporate communications.
Glenn Reid, CEO of FiveAcross, an innovator in communication software for networks, agreed. "As the blizzard of information has increased, we have all been trying to find a filter, editorial oversight as it were. That happens in blogs. If I like the blogger's point of view, I follow his or her recommendations. Connecting people to one another can be a solution."
Because traditional media platforms are closed to most of us, "these new channels offer tremendous opportunities for commercial programmers as well as for universities, companies and 'us'," said Jeremy Allaire, president of Brightcove, a new online service for distribution of TV over the Internet.
As with any opportunity, new channels also bring new challenges. "Media of any kind act as amplifiers for ideas of individuals; it's all about power," said Chandratillake. "With power comes danger. For example, two weeks ago we got a submission from the BNP, the largest anti-immigration party in the UK. Here we are now amplifying the message of an organization that would have thrown me out of England at age three."
In a world where everybody can broadcast, where everything is reported, there are problems, agreed Marc Canter of Ourmedia.org, a non-profit whose goal is to make it easy for the public to publish digital media. "But, that also means there will be more often be multiple views of events. For example, police behavior will be reported on by more than just those in the traditional media. No one source can control our view of an event. That's a tremendous positive."
More can indeed be better, especially if the content is better than the "58 hours a week of mind-numbing entertainment some people watch each week on TV," agreed Mike Homer, head of Open Media Network, a new, free public service for the mass viewing and publishing of content on the web, much of it educational. "We want to reinvent public broadcasting. We intend to accelerate content creation and audience growth, as well as harness the community to help organize, rate and rank offerings. It's an entirely new landscape for rich media delivery.


Growing Popularity
Recently, blogs have been credited with everything from CBS News anchorman Dan Rather's departure, to unauthorized previews of the latest Apple Computer products, to new transparency in presidential campaigns. The big question is whether blogs, short for weblogs, have the staying power to become more than just online diaries. Will bloggers upend the mainstream media? What legal protections should bloggers have? Is there a blogger business model?

However the growth rate of blogs is impressive. Technorati, a search engine that monitors blogs, tracked more than 8 million online diaries as of March 21, up from 100,000 just two years ago. A new blog is created every 7.4 seconds. That adds up to 12,000 new blogs a day, 275,000 posts a day and 10,800 updates an hour. At its most basic level, it's a technology that is lowering the cost of publishing and turning out to be the next extension of the web, blogging is still in its early days. It's analogous to where the web was in 1995 and 1996. It's not clear how it will turn out.

The opportunity

What is clear is that opportunities for blogging abound. Companies can use bloggers to put a more human face on interactions with employees and customers; marketers can create buzz through blogs; and bloggers can act as fact checkers for the mainstream media. There are dozens of applications for blogs, Werbach notes, and many that haven't even been conceived yet. To be sure, the concepts behind blogging aren't exactly new. Comment and feedback have been around as long as the Internet itself. What's new is the ease with which anyone can publish their thoughts on any number of topics, whether it's the latest Congressional hearings, the newest gadget or the hottest pair of shoes.
The amateur content movement was clearly enabled by the Internet, which made it relatively easy for anyone to start a web site. Some of those early sites peddled Pez dispensers and antiques (eBay) while others were just directories pointing to other sites (Yahoo). From there, the concept of amateur content has ballooned. In South Korea, for example, a newspaper dubbed ohmynews.com is written, not by trained journalists, but by regular citizens who send in their reports to editors, who then pick the best ones for publication. Companies and individuals have created their own Internet sites offering original information and content. Other sites, like the technology news-oriented Slashdot, are populated by visitors posting items they have seen elsewhere.
The Blogosphere's Rathergate

For now, blogging is much like the web sites of the mid-1990s -- lots of drivel, some useful items and plenty of opinions on every topic.
Today's blogs are mostly associated with politics -- not surprising given that former presidential candidate Howard Dean used blogs to rally supporters. Blogs detailing the documents that CBS used to question President Bush's National Guard service were picked apart by bloggers, who pointed out font differences in the documents and thus raised questions about their authenticity. The scandal, known in the "blogosphere" as Rathergate, ultimately resulted in the anchorman's departure. On the other side of the political spectrum, bloggers detailed Senator Trent Lott's glowing comments in 2002 about Strom Thurmond's presidential run in 1948 during which he supported segregation. A few apologies later, Lott gave up a bid to be the Senate majority leader.
The danger of overtly political blogs is one of selective hearing. If there's a blog for every taste, readers will just flock to sites they agree with. Fader adds that the marketplace of ideas and readers will weed out bloggers who are on the fringe and peddle bad information; they just won't develop an audience. In the future a technology may be created to rate credible bloggers. The system, which would operate like eBay's buyer and seller ratings, could create a blogger pecking order based on readers' opinions.
In the meantime, the courts are trying to figure out whether the First Amendment's freedom of the press protections apply to bloggers. Are bloggers journalists? It's a tricky question. For instance, some bloggers are de facto journalists -- because they do interviews, file news stories and provide opinions on current events -- and others are just regular people writing about their most recent family vacations. The courts will ultimately have to develop a legal test to extend press privileges, if necessary. According to Hunter, determining what will shake out in the courts is anyone's guess. It's hard to say where this will go legally however courts will ultimately give press credentials to a select group of bloggers.
For now, the disputes over press protections continue. Apple Computer recently sued a site called Think Secret for publishing information about upcoming products. Apple alleges that by publishing the data, Think Secret divulged trade secrets. Should Think Secret be treated as a journalism site? The issue spawned a host of blog entries and even a blogger boycott of Apple. The lesson: Apple can use the courts to try to stop product leaks, but the effort is likely to be futile. Indeed, a Technorati search turned up a blog revealing mockups of an iPad, a tablet PC-like device
The whole blogger-as-journalist issue also raises another key issue: Is the mainstream media about to be usurped by a bunch of amateurs? Yes and no. The mainstream media worries about blogging just as they initially did about Matt Drudge, who created a tabloid-style news site that features a few stories penned by Drudge but mostly links to other media outlets.
Blogging has already adopted a similar role of chasing tips, rumors and other potential stories. It's a threat to the mainstream media to the extent that it takes away central control of content and distribution, but "it's not a substitute for the resources and brands that media companies have developed." What's likely is that the mainstream media and blogosphere will share a happy coexistence, he adds. Indeed, bloggers often comment on, and provide links to, articles in The New York Times and other mainstream media.
Whether bloggers supplant the press will depend on their skillfulness, for commentary, bloggers' opinions are just as good as commentary printed in newspapers. However, investigative journalism will still be the hallmark of the media. First-hand reporting will be the distinction between blogging and journalism. It's a good idea to read both blogs and mainstream news. A blogger in Iraq can detail things on the ground that journalists often can't.... Bloggers are viewed more as fact checkers to keep the media honest. The challenge for mainstream media is to keep up with bloggers' speed.
Overall, media angst over blogs is misplaced. The idea that blogging will kill media is as overblown as when they said that e-commerce would kill the retailing business.
The Voice of Microsoft in Siberia
Media navel gazing is one blogger preoccupation, but another development has been the use of weblogs by companies and organizations. The "danger" is that corporations might not "understand the culture of blogging" and produce content that contains carefully vetted material instead of spontaneous writings that appeal to blog fans. Indeed, corporations are allowing employees to keep blogs, and in many cases encouraging online diaries. Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, General Motors and Boeing are just some of the companies that use blogs to communicate with employees and outsiders.
Robert Scoble, a Microsoft employee who operates Scobleizer, a blog about Microsoft products and developments, maintains one of the more interesting blogs around. Scoble, whose official title is "technical evangelist," sounds like many employees at large companies. He has his share of gripes, but will also defend his employer. The key is that he is balanced, says Brown. "This Microsoft employee has to maintain credibility by remaining transparent. By being negative once in a while, it's more credible when he's positive."
Scoble is so credible as a Microsoft blogger that he is viewed as the voice of the company across the globe. When Ted Demopoulos, principal of Demopoulos Associates, an information technology consulting company, was traveling in Russia recently, he stopped in Surgut, Siberia, where he was surprised to find Scoble fans. "I'm out in the middle of nowhere and they ask me about Scoble," says Demopoulos. "To them, Scoble is the voice of Microsoft."
Is There a Business Model?
While corporations can chalk up blogging as a marketing expense, the story is a little different for individuals. Can blogging pay the bills? If you are lucky, you can pay the hosting fees, but that's about it. Nevertheless, Experts predict that multiple business models will emerge. Individuals ages 18-25 are spending more of their time online, and marketers need to reach them. That means blogging could become a way to target the most coveted audience for media.
Bloggers currently can sell ads through a keyword system such as Google's Adsense. If an individual writes a blog about asbestos lawsuits, he or she is bound to get significant traffic from lawyers. And that could lead to subscription models. Some bloggers may become so successful that they can charge for their output. The rub with the subscription approach is that it's not clear if anyone will pay for content beyond financial news, data and pornography, says Fader. The other model is one that depends on being acquired, adds Demopoulos. Google bought Blogger.com, and media companies such as Gawker Media are buying and consolidating popular blogs.
What happens when bloggers try to make money off their sites? It's not a matter of when bloggers want to be paid, but when do readers want to pay for content. The mainstream media hasn't had the guts or savvy to start charging. It will be difficult for bloggers.
The business opportunity

Selling out to and joining mainstream media. This is what Andrew Sullivan did. Although "selling out" in this instance means handing over the technical headaches of operating his site to Time.com while retaining editorial control and accepting a regular paycheck. "Andrew Sullivan," the brand is subsumed into Time.com's, bolstering the latter. "I like to think of it as a moment when the blogosphere and the (mainstream media) made touchdown," Sullivan told the press.

Selling out while staying independent. Calacanis has managed to do this with Weblogs Inc. since selling his company to AOL last month for a reported $25 million. "The things that have changed are all on the backend," he wrote in the aftermath of Gawker's Yahoo (Research) deal. "With AOL's support we can hire more bloggers, promote the blogs, sell more advertising, and ultimately pay bloggers more money. That's the basic concept behind the deal: scaling the business." AOL gained a fresh portfolio of brands and a geyser of traffic against which to sell ads. The synergies are invisible.

Syndicate and partner while holding fast to the brands. Nick Denton at Gawker Media is building brands. To that end, he turned to syndication -- first with VNU overseas and now Yahoo -- to bolster traffic and penetrate the mainstream without selling out.

The Blog Conglomerate (the Federated Model). This is John Battelle's approach. His soon-to-launch FM Publishing network will combine the brand-oriented aspect of Denton's approach with Calacanis' focus on back-end synergies. FM Publishing will become the hub for a loose conglomerate of A-list bloggers whose combined traffic will start to reach a critical mass. But there are no editorial synergies between the diffuse blogs in the portfolio
Fit to print? The last addition to this list is a blogger federation that harvests its best thoughts, jokes and criticisms for recombination in another medium. Rather than build a business on the back of a hub site, why not have a team of editors painlessly extract and repurpose the collective intelligence of a blogging network in exchange for final approval and a share of the profits? Imagine an editorial supply chain where content begins life in a blog and is then reprocessed as needed by new layers of editors, producers, etc. To an extent, Yahoo has done just that with Gawker's syndication (and about a billion other sources). But why stop at recombining them within another Web site? Why not a magazine? Or any other medium that advertisers are willing to pay for? As it happens, that's exactly what Tony Perkins has done with Always On, where the repurposed punditry of his techie members has spawned a 100,000-circulation quarterly magazine aimed at an audience that missed reading it the first time
Blogging & Corporate America
Over the last twelve months, business leaders have grudgingly, warily, come to realize that blogging is a force that must be used—or at least accounted for—in their communications strategies. Companies are increasingly using blogs to communicate to both internal and external audiences. But blogs have also become a thorn in the side of these very same companies—witness the many vitriolic blogs posted by former employees and disgruntled customers. Corporate America may fear critical comments in public blogs, but it isn't ignoring the medium's potential for improving internal communication.The numbers are downright puny. According to The Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki (a list of blogs provided by employees about their companies and products), only 22 of the 500 largest U.S. companies operate public blogs from their executive suites. That amounts to a measly 4.4%. Has the blogging sensation passed corporations by?
Not by a long shot. Instead of public blogs, think about blog technology. That's the focus for many leading companies around the world. From McDonald's (MCD) to Cannondale Bicycle, corporations are using the software to revamp internal communications, reach out to suppliers, and remake corporate Intranets. Often the site doesn't look much different from what it's replacing. Sometimes there's nothing particularly bloggy about the results.But these corporate initiatives are interactive and cheap to deploy -- making them an attractive form of communication. "Blogs are a way to bring our knowledge together," says Dave Weick, chief information officer at McDonald's.Conversation Pieces. Over the last month, Cannondale has opened its corporate Web site to 15 of its sales and marketing staffers. Each one now has the tools to file his or her own updates, press releases, photos, and news about the race teams Cannondale sponsors, says Janet Maurice, the company's Webmaster.It may not seem like they're blogging. They're simply using software to send information. Sometimes they do it from remote Internet cafés. In time, they'll be able to file from cell phones. But each mailing, technically, is a blog post. And the program will expand to a host of Cannondale staffers and affiliates. "We're transferring our corporate content management system to blogs," Maurice says.Why are blogs supplanting traditional corporate Intranets? They're a snap to set up, and cheap to run. That's why the blog universe -- as counted by Technorati, the leading blog search engine -- has tripled to 27 million in the last year. They dwarf the number of personal Web pages, which require more technical expertise. What's more, blogs are designed to change daily and -- importantly -- to receive comments from the public. This means that while traditional corporate Intranets are static, blogs generate conversation.Extra Value. The first corporate blogger at McDonald's was Chief Operating Officer Michael Roberts, who launched his internal blog last fall. He used it to spread information through the company's global operations and receive feedback. Now, according to Weick, McDonald's is distributing blog access to thousands of employees, who will use them to report on operations at restaurants worldwide.The question at McDonald's and Cannondale is whether they'll extend blogs outside the company, to their customers. Already, newspapers such as the Houston Chronicle are building communities of bloggers, which provide new sources of information -- and new advertising platforms.Robin Hopper, CEO of iUpload, the Toronto-based outfit that hosts the McDonald's and Cannondale blogs, predicts that growing numbers of companies will distribute blogs in an effort to build social networks around their brands and products. "It's a whole new way to market," he says. "People willingly provide all sorts of demographic information on blogs." Companies can then use that to target them with customized services and advertisements.Building Trust. Hopper says that media and entertainment outfits are already sprouting blogs by the thousands. For example, the TV show Canadian Idol, the cousin of Fox's American Idol, provides a blog to every potential contestant.They use them to post their bios and pictures -- which provide material for the show's producers. Fans can also post on www.idolblogs.ca, a blogging community that has reached 40,000, says Hopper.Could Cannondale follow suit? Not so fast, warns Maurice. "With every great technology comes the fear that it might go out of control," she says. So she's launching Cannondale's blogging program cautiously, starting with brand managers and their teams. Later it will extend from so-called trusted bloggers, whose posts go up on the site automatically, to "untrusted bloggers," whose submissions must be edited. Everyone's A Critic. Companies interested in opening up branded blogs to the broad public face plenty of risks. Opponents of the company could use them to spread criticisms or nasty rumors -- and the host outfit would face the wrath of bloggers if it were seen to shut down or censor customers' entries. Conversely, if criticism appears on the blogs, the company can learn quickly and respond. For such giants as Wal-Mart (WMT) and McDonald's -- both subjects of blistering documentaries recently -- such an early warning system might prove to be worth the gamble
Blogging for Market Research
The Blogosphere is a vast, unruly, and totally tantalizing mother lode of unvarnished consumer opinion on every product and service in the capitalist universe. But to know what the masses are saying about your product, you would have to dig through 350,000 fresh daily postings on a staggering 20 million blogs worldwide (90% of them are based in the U.S.). And that's just the beginning. Roughly 50,000 new blogs are launched every day.
Let's say you're still determined to find out how your new gizmo is being received. You could hire a couple of teenagers to Google the product name all day and compile a digest of all the blog citations. But they would probably end up with a vast amount of material, particularly for mass-market products such as a new line of blue jeans or brand of ice cream. And it would be difficult to draw meaningful conclusions from the quotes because bloggers don't always reveal basic information about themselves (such as their age and gender).
Enter Umbria, a market research firm in Boulder that designs software to find useful consumer intelligence on the Internet. "The blogosphere is overflowing with brutally honest opinion," says Howard Kaushansky, Umbria's 47-year-old CEO. "Our goal is to track those opinions down."
Every few hours Umbria (http://www.umbrialistens.com) sends an application called a spider out over the web to scour the blogosphere for postings about the firm's clients, most of which are big consumer companies, such as Electronic Arts, SAP, and Sprint. By analyzing keywords in blogs, Umbria can classify each citation thematically. In the case of Sprint, for example, Umbria's software can tell whether a blogger is talking about customer service, the company's advertisements, or a particular calling plan.
Another big challenge is to decipher what's on a blogger's mind. To figure out whether an opinion is strong or tepid, for example, it helps to know that "awesome" is a stronger endorsement than "pretty cool," and that "shoddy" is less damning than "abominable." Umbria has several employees with Ph.D.s in linguistics and artificial intelligence who are forever tweaking the software to make it better at categorizing opinions.
Kaushansky claims his software can even identify sarcasm, a useful skill in the prickly blogosphere. Consider this statement: "The Treo 650 is the greatest phone in the world ... NOT!" Umbria's language-parsing software is "trained" to classify that and other common sarcastic turns of phrase as negative sentiments about the client. "Sarcasm is difficult for people to pick up, let alone machines," says Kaushansky. "But it's very valuable from a market research standpoint because it tells you how a customer really feels."
The software can also estimate the author's age and gender. Elongated spellings ("soooooooo"), multiple exclamation marks (!!!), and acronyms such as POS ("parent over shoulder") suggest a teenage female member of Generation Y (born after 1979). The blogger is probably a teenage boy if a posting is rife with hip-hop terminology such as "aight" (translation: "all right") and "true dat" ("I agree!").
The twenty- and thirty-something members of Generation X are more likely to use complete sentences. Gen X men also tend to favor satiric jibes and vivid adjectives such as "sordid" and "hilarious." Gen X women favor elaborately emotive turns of phrase, such as "wishing I could just crawl out of my skin and go on without it" (a real example). Male baby-boomers, on the other hand, tend to favor stale hip-hop-isms such as "jiggy" and "bling." They also pepper their blogs with terms such as "prostate" and "IRA."
Umbria's service is warp-speed quick. It usually takes less than a minute for the spider to crawl through those 20 million blogs. That's followed by a few additional minutes spent running linguistic algorithms on any relevant blog entries. Then out spits an "Umbria Buzz Report" that tells clients how they are being portrayed in the blogosphere. The reports cover the overall brand experience, along with consumer reactions to specific products and even specific features of those products. Umbria also tallies the number of comments, classifies all of them by estimated age and gender, and gauges whether blog sentiment is skewing positive or negative. In its reports, available weekly or monthly, Umbria always makes a point of reproducing a few of the juiciest blog postings verbatim (see the box above).
Bloggers are often early adopters of products and services, according to Kaushansky, and they tend to be more fervent and expansive in their opinions than the general population. Clients say Umbria's service helps them discern attitudes that may not show up for months using traditional market-research tools such as surveys and focus groups. Working on behalf of U.S. Cellular (http://www.uscc.com), for example, Umbria trawled the blogosphere and provided an early read that teens were especially anxious about exceeding their calling-plan minutes. The reason: They worried that their parents might charge them for overages.
Buzz Reports are infinitely customizable. Umbria can gauge the response to a specific product launch or an advertising campaign. The service is also useful for gathering intelligence on competitors. Izze Beverage (http://www.izze.com), a 45-employee Boulder company that makes sparkling fruit juices, recently engaged Umbria to track what bloggers were saying about rival brands. The exercise was a revelation, according to CEO Todd Woloson. When a blogger had a bad fruit juice experience with one of his competitors, the result was often a profane online rant. "We want to make sure that never happens to us," says Woloson. The company recently hired a customer relations specialist that it hopes will soothe angry consumers before they take to their blogs.
Umbria is a relatively small player in the $20 million blog research market, with a 10% share. Principal rivals include Cincinnati-based Intelliseek (http://www.invisible.com), which controls about a third of the market, and BuzzMetrics in New York, which does not disclose revenues. The latter two companies also crawl the blogosphere on behalf of corporate clients. But Umbria's solution is entirely software-based. Kaushansky's competitors also meet with clients to interpret the data and suggest strategic responses. "Ultimately we rely on both technology and humans for analysis," says Max Kalehoff, marketing director for BuzzMetrics. "Umbria takes an extremely automated approach."
Automation is the source of Umbria's competitive edge: affordability. Companies pay roughly $60,000 a year for its service. By contrast, the fee to engage one of its rivals can easily run into the seven figures. Kaushansky intends to maintain Umbria's low-cost and no-consultants strategy. The company's next frontier: algorithms that will classify bloggers by ethnicity, location, income, social class, and level of education.
GM and blogging
When Bob Lutz, the vice chairman of product development at General Motors, wants to get quick feedback from consumers on the company's latest product launch, new strategy, or something as specific as the quality of the sheet-metal fits on the latest Chevrolet, he knows where to go: his corporate blog, http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/.
Lutz is among a small but growing number of corporate executives who have started to experiment with blogs—Web-based commentary sites usually written in a first-person, conversational manner—to connect with customers online and advance corporate communications and marketing goals.
There are sixty-plus blogs produced by large corporations—and many more if, for example, you count the approximately 2,000 individual blogs written by Sun Microsystems employees that are then aggregated into one group blog at http://www.blogs.sun.com/. Besides General Motors and Sun Microsystems, companies that encourage blogging activity include The Boeing Company, Google, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Red Hat, Edelman, Stonyfield Farm, and Yahoo. These blogs are part of a constantly expanding blogosphere that, as of the end of 2004, had some 32 million readers, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
What Lutz and other executives recognize is that a blog is an incredibly effective yet low-cost way to:
· Influence the public "conversation" about your company: Make it easy for journalists to find the latest, most accurate information about new products or ventures. In the case of a crisis, a blog allows you to shape the conversation about it.
· Enhance brand visibility and credibility: Appear higher in search engine rankings, establish expertise in industry or subject area, and personalize one's company by giving it a human voice.
· Achieve customer intimacy: Speak directly to consumers and have them come right back with suggestions or complaints—or kudos.
How bloggers connectBloggers are somewhat like constantly circulating guests at a very large cocktail party: They don't all talk directly with one another, but each of them talks to many others, thus forming a richly interlinked network. According to David Sifry, founder and CEO of blog-focused search engine Technorati, there are almost 18 million blogs, spanning over one and a half billion links.
Technically, conversations among bloggers can occur in two ways. Blogging software can be configured to allow blog visitors to post a comment that others visiting the blog can also view. The GM FastLane blog featuring Lutz's comments is a corporate site that invites visitors to post their thoughts as well.
Other corporate sites do not permit posts from outsiders but do communicate on a blog-to-blog basis using various tools (such as the search engines Technorati, PubSub, and Google Blog Search) that allow users to monitor what is being said about themselves or their blog in cyberspace. These corporate blogs, like the vast majority of other blogs out there, use RSS (for real simple syndication) feeds, a tool that allows people to subscribe to blogs and thus be notified when the blogger has posted something new.
"If you are going to do a blog, you should always have an RSS feed of your own, which then allows people to subscribe to your publication," says Tim Bray, director of Web technologies at Sun Microsystems.
Take a lead in the conversationThis ability to engage with others is what gives blogs their power. "Blogs are all about conversations," says Sifry. A corporate blog allows a company both to keep an ear to the ground to hear what's being said about it and, if necessary, speak up with a correction.
"If you're not blogging, you're missing out on the chance to contribute to the conversation taking place in the blogosphere," says consultant Debbie Weil, creator of the BlogWrite for CEOs blog (http://www.blogwriteforceos.com/) and author of The Corporate Blogging Book (forthcoming in 2006 from Penguin/Portfolio).
You're also missing out on the chance to reach the journalists who write about your company for more traditional media outlets: a Euro RSCG Magnet and Columbia University Survey of the Media in 2005 found that 51 percent of journalists view blogs regularly.
Boost credibility and get closer to customersNot surprisingly, many of the early adopters of blogs have been technology companies eager to leverage blogs' ability to position a company executive for recognition as an expert in a given industry or on a specific topic. With his blog, Jonathan Schwartz, the president and COO of Sun Microsystems, has established himself (blogs.sun.com/jonathan) as a thought leader on issues pertinent to computer operating systems.
"Blogs allow us to get our message out to the world in a direct, unmediated, and unfiltered way," Bray says. Bray, who has been blogging since February of 2003 on tech-related topics, says that blogging allows Sun to write things that "are read directly by people in the software development community without being filtered by journalists and analysts."
He adds that a more subtle benefit is the fact that the blogging by Schwartz and many other employees has made it apparent to the world that Sun is not a faceless corporate monolith but a community of people who are passionate about software and information technology, and eager to engage with customers. He mentions one instance when a blog reader was trying to figure out how to obtain a type of software licensing approval from Sun. Several employee bloggers volunteered to assist, says Bray, and "they put the problem on a quick path to resolution.
Blog Pulse
here are many sites such as daypop.com and blogdex.com that can tell you what subjects are hot in the blogging world. And that's invaluable information if you've just released a new product and want to see what the world—or at least the part of the world that is online—is saying about it.
What we particularly like about BlogPulse, which is produced by Intelliseek, is its ability to graphically pinpoint blog news to specific time periods. So let's say Apple wants to look at blog mentions of its recently released Tiger operating system. Steve Jobs would enter those terms into the BlogPulse search bar. When the results are displayed, he would click the “Trend this Search” icon at the top of the list. This produces a chart that shows blog activity by date. You can click on the peaks to see what the buzz was that day. In this case, the big news was around the April 29 launch date, but you can also see more blog mentions generated on June 6, when the Apple-Intel relationship was announced.
This information will not only give you links to specific content about your product generated around the Web, but also provide a view into what specifically generates interest in your product or company.
Conclusion
Blogging is not a fad, it's the rise of amateur content, which is replacing the centralized, controlled content done by professionals. While most agree that blogging will continue to be popular, its next steps are uncertain. Blogging overexposure is on the horizon. Right now, blogging is trendy, I see that lasting a few years, but it will slow down. Blogging is here to stay, as many sites start to incorporate blogging features, and some news sites become more blog-like. The blogosphere will also become known for topics other than technology and politics. Two things are certain: Blogging will remain disruptive to the traditional media, and new uses will surface. You are going to see blogging move to video and instant messaging. It's just the beginning.
Sources:
HBS Articles, Knowledge @ Wharton, Cover stories on blogging in Fortune, CNN and Business Week