Navel Gazing

This week's BusinessWeek magazine did some navel gazing for bloggers with a cover article on blogs and how they will change your business. If you're a blogger, you're already a believer -- granted some of you do some rather personal navel gazing in the public blogosphere, and probably don't get the difference between blogs and personal journals. The article contends that blogs are a prerequisite, "not a business elective."

Why? Consider the following argument. Businesses in the past have controlled their image and public perception. They had much more control in the past, especially with media in the hands of the few, who were also businesses. With freedom of the press and media control shared amongst the conglomerates and some smaller players, business lost some control of the shaping of public perception. But, they still had significant control. They controlled their image by buying media time -- one way or another -- via commercial time, or by bullying the free press. To some degree, the public is still under the barrage of business propaganda. Blogs are changing that however. Suddenly, media is not controlled. Media has been disseminated to the masses via blogging tools. Everyone has become a publisher. The court of public opinion is lot more powerful that the court of law. Media can make or break a company. Blogs can make or break a company.

What are businesses to do? Blog. Already some businesses are setting up blogs, and are engaging in public discourse with their customers, potential customers and the denizens of the blogosphere. It is expected that as businesses see the potential of the blogosphere, that huge portions of its real estate will be bought out. You can already find business presence on personal blogs via advertising and paid blogging -- where businesses pay bloggers to write about them. There is danger for the blogosphere in this change. Right now, the loose nature of the blogosphere is scary. Who do you trust? Which blogs are reliable news sources? Many blogs cater to further marginalization of society. What happens when businesses realize that they can play this wild-west environment for their own advantage? Consider the possibility of businesses setting up "unbranded blogs of their own to promote their products -- or to tar the competition." How will one tell the difference between editorial content and advertising in disguise?

There are questionable uses of blogs -- exploitation of blogs is quite possible, and in today's environment it's probably easy to accomplish. The bigger potential for businesses using blogs exist however in the very nature of blogs. Blogs are unlike the static pages that make up the rest of the internet. The blogosphere is an entity that's alive. It's constantly changing, reshaping itself and evolving. When a topic enters the blogosphere, it either dies quietly, or it grows and evolves via the cross-posting, linking via other blogs and the public discourse the ensues. Consider the December tsunami that hit Asia. The blogosphere was taken over for a couple of months as bloggers broke news, shared opinions and pressured governments into action. Imagine this living entity that is the blogosphere being mapped -- think of an opinion map that is overlaid on some physical map that represents geography or age or sex or whatever else -- imagine a business being able to tap into this rich source of information. Suddenly, a business could know if conditions are right to launch a particular product or service; or they could have up to the minute feedback on what the world is thinking -- what the world is thinking about their product. The possibilities are endless. And it doesn't end with businesses -- governments, public interest groups, etc., all have something to learn, gain and exploit.

BusinessWeek, listening to their own prophecy, have created their own blog: Blogspotting.net. Check it out.