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Blogs- Influence Or Reach?
Let me make a bold statement. In a over one year+ blogging it has translated into serious dollars for me. Not just in the case of ad revenue, but through connections, critical business intelligence, idea development, exchange of core competencies and the formation of similar cabals with powerful reach. I will promise to go into this for another day yet, but any businessperson (especially emerging and mid-level) who doesn’t get blogging by now then it is time to hop on the ClueTrain…any train will do or perhaps in front of train? Who am I to judge?
I vowed to myself that I would take the holiday off and I would extend it into the weekend but with an impending power point due from my fellow colleague and security guru, Chris Boyd, (who honestly used to conduct symphonies- go figure) on our recent research into the potentially dangerous Middle-Eastern based Botnets. Therefore, I figured I needed a warm-up for the mind, fingers and work off some of the holiday feast by- blogging.
It is one hot topic for me, recently my wife started her own blog (I sprang for her own domain, hosting and WordPress was free) and she uses it for reminders, updates ,special praise, reading notes, you know all the cool stuff I never did in school but if I had a PC or even a VAX account… Who am I kidding I would be in a MUD! Amazingly though both students and parents respond heavily in favor to the blog. Once Jim Kukral and I get her up to par on some basic HTML it will only improve in what she can do. Folks this is a private middle school…where are the teacher’s blogs? Why do the ones I find look like HTML circa 1995?
Now we have Forbes screaming it on its front cover and the New York Times covered several bloggers at the Revenews community (not the first time either). Clearly intelligent bloggers and groups of bright bloggers have the attention of both the mass media and top-tier powerful influencers. E.g. The Tipping Point in some cases.
Blogging? What the hell is it? Ask any pundit, any expert, any e-commerce analyst or any hobbyist, and you will get a different answer. In my opinion, to steal an analogy from Brian Clark, envision the Internet as a giant campfire and you really just have people sitting around this big campfire telling stories. Some stories fade away, some become digital lore, many become distorted, but blogging at its best is pure communication and much like telling stories. They are the lenses into the thought process of the author or group and if that author or group matters to you then I suggest you start reading. and better yet participating.
Even sweeter many, but not all blogs, are devoid of internet pollution or they stay light on ads. The ads don’t bother me at all because I want the influencers make it their full time gigas long as they are not trying any ActiveX funny business.
Blogging is communication that is usually opinionated and propagates savagely fast, not always accurate, but provides a different tenor that wha Network News, IRC, IM, E-mail and even message boards. Blogs are filtered information vetted by peers to feed to the news hungry masses and other key bloggers.
Now my mind is warmed I can stop the verbose mode and boil it down. The key take away here before we start asking importants questions in another entry. In short- to interact with the blogosphere, to shape it- you must become a part of the conversation.
For example, maybe someone like that on the Sony BMG would have been beneficial on their take about blogging. I bet Sony blogging is a repercussion caused by one pissed off guy at SysInternals.com who managed to take a pebble (in this case perhaps a small boulder) and drop it into the lake wrapped up in the name of a Rootkit he discovered on his CD. Coincidentally the Rootkit research called our research team to practice even greater scrutiny on the recent AI-like worms traversing IM land and led us into an unholy, global hornet’s nest that frankly I am not at liberty to make a comment on.
At any rate the next rock echoes into the lake, collides with other ripples and creates whitewater- which is fine, if you have a raft. Otherwise, like Sony, a brand will be caught up the proverbial stream without a paddle- not even a cane pole. If I were in the same boat with a paddle or a cane pole I would not be rowing; I’d be hitting people in the head with it in hopes common sense and duty to one’s customer returns. In business our success is predicated on how well we treat our customers. Wild-fire blogs can do massive damage and sometimes that damage is good because it clears the way for new growth.. I was too young to remember Ralph Nadar, but imagine how his work might have changed with the onset of blogs?
Let’s take a look at some of these notable paragraphs from the Forbes article, “Attack of the Blogs.”
p.130
Blogs started a few years ago as a simple way for people to keep online diaries. Suddenly they are the ultimate vehicle for brand-bashing, personal attacks, political extremism and smear campaigns. It’s not easy to fight back: Often a bashing victim can’t even figure out who his attacker is. No target is too mighty, or too obscure, for this new and virulent strain of oratory. Microsoft has been hammered by bloggers; so have CBS, CNN and ABC News, two research boutiques that criticized IBM’s Notes software, the maker of Kryptonite bike locks, a Virginia congressman outed as a homosexual and dozens of other victims–even a right-wing blogger who dared defend a blog-mob scapegoat.
Forbes establishes that blogs can get key info out fast like the Kryptonite lock disaster as well as other agendas. Take one blog alone and it is a single spark, once it gains momentum, fanned by WWW fast winds, they become powerful change agents- Memes on steroids forged from fire.
“Bloggers are more of a threat than people realize, and they are only going to get more toxic. This is the new reality,” says Peter Blackshaw, chief marketing officer at Intelliseek, a Cincinnati firm that sifts through millions of blogs to provide watch-your-back service to 75 clients, including Procter & Gamble and Ford. “The potential for brand damage is really high,”says Frank Shaw, executive vice president at Microsoft’s main public relations firm, Waggener Edstrom. “There is bad information out there in the blog space, and you have only hours to get ahead of it and cut it off, especially if it’s juicy.”
We know have threats from adware and spyware, threats from rogue bots and now people armed with words and bad info are threats! This is why it is important for a company to be transparent as they can and not be reactive but proactive. Thus they just be a part of the conversation. Don’t sit around gazing at the sky but approach the campfire, sit down, roast a marshmallow and listen- then speak. Some companies now use blogs as a weapon, unleashing swarms of critics on their rivals. “I’d say 50% to 60% of attacks are sponsored by competitors,” says Bruce Fischman, a lawyer in Miami for targets of online abuse. He says he represents a high-tech firm thrashed by blogs that were secretly funded by a rival; the parties are in talks to settle out of court. One blog, Groklaw, exists primarily to bash software maker SCOGroup in its Linux patent lawsuit against IBM, producing laughably biased, pro-IBMcoverage; its origins are a mystery (see box, p. 136).
This is true to a degree but they are talking brute force trash attacks. A powerful attack in the blogosphere should be coordinated, stay within ethical limits.
For example, anti-spyware could hang spyware in their nooses all day long but they rarely need to because some companies actions are so egregious they practically weave their own noose and stick their neck in the rope and leap off the biggest piece of furniture they can find. (Find some more stools!)
There is no need to launch such offensives. This smacks of dirty politics. Every company has one skeleton (and for some a complete morgue) in their closet. Find it and expose it. The good news in the future I see dedicated employees to be “street advocates”, or pro-bloggers because the space is so sophisticated and the stakes are higher.
The online haters have formidable allies amplifying their tirades to a potential worldwide audience of 900 million: Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, plus a raft of other blog hosts. Google is the largest player; its Blogger.com site attracts 15 million visitors a month, more than each of the Web sites of the New York Times, USAToday and the Washington Post. An upstart, Six Apart in SanFrancisco, owns three blogging services–TypePad, LiveJournal and Movable Type–that together run a strong second to Google.
With this array of pseudo-alliances Netizens cannot be ignored, they will not go away and while many go abandoned, the true influencers do not and will not.
Remember- one uber-influencer can make or break your product or a swarm of powerful bloggers can do the same.
Good points Wayne. Look what the guy did to Sony and their rootkit crap. One angry consumer took down a giant with some detective work.
What really disgusted me is that the mainstream media hardly touched the story which is why even though blogs are biased they are still full of great information and I tune into them first and wait to see what the so-called media reports.