Eric Peterson Smacks Scoble Again...

Michael Gartenberg | March 08, 2005, 09:46 AM

Eric smacks Scoble again :)... Once again, I'm forced to agree with Eric and believe me, I know the importance of blogging. Over time, however, it's just another way of extending a conversation that's already taking place and it will be far from unique. The problem with all the hype (Blog or DIE) is that misguided folks will see this as a panacea for all their corporate and marketing ills an it's not. I can already point to organizations who have experimented with blogging and came up with miserable results. Or of course all those folks who dived head on into the blogging pool and came up un-employed. There's a right way to go about blogging and a lot of wrong ways to do so as well. Looking at Scoble and Microsoft isn't the best model at all, unless you happen to be Robert Scoble and Len Pryor happens to be your boss.

Scoble's at it again, talking about how bloggers and blogging will change the world. I definitely give him credit for being a vocal evangelist for the cause but again I think he misses the mark when attempting to communication what are surely good intentions.

Robert's thesis about the value of bloggers to an organization:

• Companies that have lots of bloggers will end up making better products, will end up having better marketing and PR, will end up making more profit at the end of the day, and will be more likely to have more than one "hit product" and will be more likely to last 100s of years.

I would counter with the following:

• Companies that have lots of bloggers will end up losing focus because they're spending all their time moderating and mediating the unnecessary posts of people who should otherwise be working, will end up in court at some point because of some post or comment deemed unacceptable or in violation of corporate policy, will be no more likely to have one "hit product" because blogging and innovation are in no way, shape or form tied together, and will fail and succeed at the exact same rate as any other company.

Also, before everyone writes me and says "you hypocrite, you work for a company with lots of bloggers" keep in mind, as Michael points out we get paid to blog at JupiterResearch. Ours are corporate blogs, sanctioned and governed by the company, intended to serve as a forum to share our ideas with a larger audience than we reach through inquiry sessions and client outreach. This also explains why we don't allow comments in our blogs.

Don't get me wrong, blogging has a place in corporations, perhaps even in marketing groups. My problem with Robert's recent assertions is that his writing suggests that how companies should blog is already well defined and that any company not actively trying to figure out how to deploy RSS might as well close up shop. Robert is placing too much importance on the value of blogging, bless his heart, and so his message that "marketing must get better because marketing IS communication and communication IS about relationships" is getting lost in the hyperbole.

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