Getting Smarter

Congratulations on a well-done article...liked the focus on the corporate opportunities, which has been under-discussed in the consumer blog frenzy of late.

Look forward to following Blogspotting.

michael

Heather,

Great blog.

I too am convinced these kinds of services will spur more traditional broadcasters to adopt citizen reports.

I'm a fairly unique visitor here (I can't be the first BW subscriber to post here, can I???) I'm a 30-year journalist who started at UPI, then went to a daily paper here in Bend, Oregon, then left to write local news for a Website here - a full-time job, and a rarity. Lasted five years before the bucks ran out.
Now I'm assistant news director at a local TV station, and ... well, I believe blogs (and just as importantly, easy to create/update Website tools like Squarespace) are a part of the media future. But just how big a part still remains to be seen, as everyone tries to figure out how to make it self-sustaining - ROI and all that.

Just because the answers aren't easy or apparent doesn't mean they are not out there. What happens when WiMax and/or cheap PSP-like devices make it possible to easily surf from anywhere? The mind boggles;-)

Congrats with you sparking new blog – the fact is that weblogs aren’t used that much by established media yet. In Denmark the media don’t dare – or don’t understand what its all about.

Many companies don’t.

I’ve just started a brand new blog my self – its about design and innovation. And isn’t it all about designing new inventions, new ways doing things? Communicating?

I think so.

Good luck with your project J

All the best
Hans Henrik:
Cph127-pilot

Good article that really shows the urgency for companies to start blogging. What I am missing at Blogspotting.net(great name!)is a list of good business blogs, blogs about law (blawging), etc, that can give business managers a head start if they want to explore the blogosphere. I am not one of them, because I am a freelance journalist writing about the blogosphere since 2003, first in Dutch now in English http://dannyfriedmann.nl. I'll put a link to your blog on my site.

Congratulations on opening another conversation place. Across the globe there are many businesses in the news and information supply chain which will be affected by the shrinking of the canyon between news and information manufacturer and consumer. The folks in these businesses need to be considered in the conversation about the future and they ought to join in. Citizen journalism and the rapidly changing digital landscape and wonderful developments but we need to be aware of collateral damage to small business and the fasmilies involved along the way.

Delighted to see you folks doing this. As you note, it's an excitingly different world out there, and I look forward to a voice I know speaks my language to provide some commentary on the tour.
Thanks

In the book review of your magazine this week, Otis Port reports on fab labs, or personnal fabrication of real things (w/o brand). In the Wall Street Journal early this week, there was a review on IP TV, and how this technology will bring a revolution to our TV experiences (w/o advertisement basicaly). Now you announce the dawn of a new era when institutional websites are embedded into blogs and news are brought forward by citizens(w/o advertisement, again).
Hopefully, there will still be some huge publicities and lightning brands in the street to remind us the good'ol'days...otherwise we will soon feel lost in an unknown environment ;-)

The blogging boom is also spurring new technologies for analyzing/searching blog data. BlogPulse (http://www.blogpulse.com) from Intelliseek uses the company's advanced text-analysis technologies to analyze blog posts daily to track key issues, trends, traffic and personalities being "blogged" about...and the key links (blogs orn ot) that bloggers are sharing and recommendation to others.

A true strenght of "citizen journalism" is that real facts get out, not just what the commercial interests want us to read about. I think this is a backlash against the rise of corporate media networks and the true desire of the people for truth. Blog on!

Hats off, and a great article. I read it on-line and it's the longest OL article I've fully read in a long time.
... So now I'm adding a comment on a blog, that watches the world of blogs, that was birthed by an BW article about blogs, by MSM watching the world of blogs... how many levels of "meta" can we be in?
hcpark.blogspot.com

Good idea - the business blog, I mean. One suggestion: consider changing your font/spacing so there is a little more white space on each page. As it stands, it appears too compact for any reader that is shy of 20-20. If you really want THE WORLD (including the often-affluent 50+ crowd) to participate regularly, it would seem prudent to make the format visually convenient for all.

Great article and kudos for continuing the conversation. I'll be curious to see how this online venture defines itself in the coming months.

These blog things have a tendency of taking on a life of their own.

Very interesting article...thanks. Read on the net not on paper btw.

The idea of citizen journalism as being a way to "get the real facts out" is very attractive. However, the MSM do a real service in vetting and filtering. It would be of interest to me to know your thoughts and those of others on how this will happen in the blogosphere. E.G., how will propoganda be distringuished from real informaition? Not that this isn't somewhat of a problem in MSM, but at least over time one can make some judgments about the reliability of verious outlets.

Anyhow great start.

A problem with business blogs in general are the behind-the-scenes relationships that could result in censorship if the hosting company is attempting to generate advertising revenue and a blog exposes a company who advertises or has an executive relationship.

The traditional professional journalist is supposed to be fairly well insulated against the intrusions of sales and marketing or executive interests, although that insulation burns through from time to time. But bloggers have no such protection, and believe me, from personal experience (being locked out of my blog then perpetually ignored by support) any well-connected or well-heeled entity can and will take its case to someone like blogger.com (Google) and will get their way. And there is no higher court to which a case can go, particularly because the service is free and you accept the TOS just by using it. They don't even have to explain who or why they did what they did.

The danger for consumer advocacy or business-related bloggers lies in further media concentration in the hands of entities who do not have formal (and enforced) policies against revenue-sensitive decision making about content and coverage.

M. O.

Well let's see how long your comments section last.

Good article, I wonder how many companies will understand how blogs can really mess with their business and what they will do about it.

Here I am, an anonymous blogger. I could post some truly damaging info about you or our competitor. Right here in your own comments page. Or on my own blog.
I could be a disgruntled employee working for Businessweek. I could be a kid hired for 100 bucks to roam around and post nasty stuff about Businessweek.

You had some predictions, well me too. I see more crap from people like Steve Rubel telling companies how to subvert the blogs.
Screw the authentic customer voice! Companies can say how great it is to hear it, but their first priority will be to crush any blogging decent.

You want to know what I learned from the political blogging last year? How big a sucker the media is for a scandal and they will run with it with out checking the source or the backing of the rumor starter. Who started the story about Dan Rather? A blogger with deep ties to the Republican party. Don’t get me started on the thousands of crap stories that got fed to Drudge by the republicans and worked their way up to partisan hacks from Fox, CNN and finally to the so called liberal media.

It is the nature of most businesses to want to control the information about them. You think the idiots at Free Republic and Little Green Footballs allow decent on their blogs? Hell no! Do you think that companies will want any crackpot with a laptop to say shit about them and NOT try and track them down and destroy them? Hell no!

How? Lots of tricks I don't want to reveal them all here because if I know the people who are reading these comments they will be taking notes, “Hey boss! I found out how we can stop the bloggers!” But since they are already doing it and you mentioned it… We’ll see things like using SEOs to tweak their own blogs to the top. Hiring fake bloggers to say nice things or nasty things about competitors. They will create flogs, or Fake Blogs. Guess what McDonalds already did to trick consumers.

But even if GM doesn't pay for positive coverage in blogs (HOW DO YOU KNOW THEY DON'T?), just consider the possibilities in this new footloose media world.

There's little to stop companies from quietly buying bloggers' support, or even starting unbranded blogs of their own to promote their products -- or to tar the competition. This raises all kinds of questions about the ever-shrinking wall between advertising and editorial.
Yep, that makes sense about what you care about, not the ethics of buying support or starting fake blogs, but what happens to the advertising revenue. LOOK AT THE BIGGER PICURE! Blogs can be SO easily subverted. And they will be because until companies figure out how to crush the voice of unhappy bloggers their brands are at risk. Of course they COULD do the right thing and make good products and give good support. But that is much harder than gaming the blogging system.

We'll cover that later, when we get to the blogs' impact on our own business -- the media.
What if someone blogs on a topic that is outside the norm on their personal time. Does the employer have the right to fire someone who is blogging on socially distasteful, racist, or sexist topics?

Say that I work for Clear Channel and in my off time I post to my blog talking about how I think that all the prisoners in Abu Ghraib should have a stick of dynamite put in their behind and dropped from 30,000 feet from an airplane. Now is that okay? What if I say it during my radio program? http://s88172659.onlinehome.us/2004/12/fcc-hate-speech-okay-pixilated-breasts.html Is that okay? Well that is what Michael Savage did. He works for Clear Channel.

Bloggers are lucky; there is a window of opportunity to talk to the rest of the world. But this tool will be subvert and junked up to practically uselessness like email has been by spam. The fact that BusinessWeek is writing about this signals the beginning of the end for authentic voices on blogs. Good by blogs hello flogs.

It is about time! :P

Congratulations on the new blog and opening the conversation up.

Heather and Steve:
Cover story compelling. BW once again at the front of the pack - it's why I subscribe. Does the community expect darwinian selection of consensus de facto "go-to" info source? I wonder. Hitler and Goebbels sounded really good to their audience, too. Professional journalists need to participate, 'cause the stuff people read touches them and propels them. There's a lot of stuff that can be said that's short of libel or legal action that's just misleading. Readers can probably pick out planted information and thinly disguised advertisement. But, it's a big world out there and there's times when it takes a trained person to ask the defining expository questions that remove ambiguity.

Thoughts?
Pete Z.

I enjoyed the article and thought it was very thought-provoking. Have you looked at other online
forums such as nmlcomplaints.com? This site receives daily updates from a variety of sources,
including current and former Northwestern Mutual Life agents, policyowners and employees. Northwestern Mutual has filed a lawsuit against the website founders to attempt to close the site and the company's behavior in general is a textbook example of what not to do in response to what is happening online.

Heather,

You may be interested to see Roch Smith Jr.'s Greensboro101 site.

( http://www.greensboro101.com/ )

It's a great example of innovation and progress in citizen's media through the use of blogging.
(Greensboro is, of course, home to the News & Record as you mentioned above).

Good jobs.Thanks.

Spocko above does raise some good points. It's true that companies – and politicians – will find ways to stop the public voice, or anyone from saying anything bad about them. Obviously, in other countries, they may just assassinate journalists who are saying how they feel on the internet. But, in most countries, they'll try and find tricks to drown out the other voices. Scam companies do this a lot.
However, I think Google and search engines need to find ways to combat this. Google might just be doing that with their new Latent Semantic Indexing idea. The truth of this, is, that if someone 'bad' controlled Google – he controls a great deal of the flow of information. Somehow, we need to ensure that the public does not put all of its information in the hands of a few small companies.

I agree with you on that. In fact, I was more than glad that services are now available for reporters and journalists to have the easier way to inform the masses and the authorities about the real score among people and events. I just hope media won’t abuse this.