Bashed by the Blogosphere About Our Blogs Research

David Schatsky | July 12, 2006, 03:33 PM

We got bashed by a cascade of bloggers for how we handled their inquiries about a news release we did on Greg Dowling's report on corporate blogging and blog software.

I recognize the value of making more methodology information readily available so that interested parties can better interpret the information that we publicize. We'll look at how to do that; obviously we didn't handle communications with interested parties as smoothly as we might have. Of course, our clients have always had unlimited access to that information. Clients, if any of you want more information about that research, please contact us right away and we'll set up a call.

And we do post on our public Web site some generally applicable information about our methdologies, including an overview of our data tools, and a list of our data partners.

We've actually been very open with bloggers. We try our best to respond to responsible inquiries from them, link to them, and have even shared research reports with bloggers, as we sometimes do with members of the trade and mainstream press. We will not cooperate with bloggers who we perceive to be competitors, of course. After all, we have a thriving consulting and custom research business alongside our syndicated research business. Nonetheless, I'm going to talk to our PR firm and provide them with clearer guidelines on how to handle inquiries from bloggers in the future, and I'll look into provide a bit more information in news releases as well, at least in the versions we post on our site.