Blogging is one of Fortune magazine’s ten trends of 2004.
The blogshort for weblogcan indeed be, as Scoble and Gates say, fabulous for relationships. But it can also be much more: a company’s worst PR nightmare, its best chance to talk with new and old customers, an ideal way to send out information, and the hardest way to control it. Blogs are challenging the media and changing how people in advertising, marketing, and public relations do their jobs. A few companies like Microsoft are finding ways to work with the blogging worldeven as they’re getting hammered by it. So far, most others are simply ignoring it.
That will get harder: According to blog search-engine and measurement firm Technorati, 23,000 new weblogs are created every dayor about one every three seconds. Each blog adds to an inescapable trend fueled by the Internet: the democratization of power and opinion. Blogs are just the latest tool that makes it harder for corporations and other institutions to control and dictate their message. An amateur media is springing up, and the smart are adapting. Says Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman Public Relations: “Now you’ve got to pitch the bloggers too. You can’t just pitch to conventional media.”
