Monday, February 4, 2008

Blogs v. Forums...

In the May 2, 2005 issue of Business Week, Stephen Baker and Heather Green posted an article entitled, "Blogs Will Change Your Business", and I quote:

Go ahead and bellyache about blogs. But you cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they're simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they're going to shake up just about every business -- including yours. It doesn't matter whether you're shipping paper clips, pork bellies, or videos of Britney in a bikini, blogs are a phenomenon that you cannot ignore, postpone, or delegate. Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective. They're a prerequisite. (And yes, that goes for us, too.)

I disagree with Baker and Green -- and a simple understanding of a fundamental problem and it's situation as a result of the introduction of the Internet will clear the air. Generally speaking, those in position of power, the higher ups, those that run the companies and the government -- those that provide the stuff that all the rest of us consume -- seem to have some kind of aversion against receiving communications from their customers. They, of course, can communicate down -- through their advertising and PR departments. Upward communication was limited primarily to the written letter, which was easily ignored.

The creation of the Internet has provided a nice easy mechanism for two-way communication, but most of those higher ups are very slow in responding. As a result, many lower downs are choosing to adapt this new "soap box" into a web log, or "Blog", where they can broadcast their complaints, among other things, to the whole wide world. This is the phenomenon to which Baker and Green refer.

The answer, of course, is for those higher ups to establish forums for communication with the world -- thus subverting any need for anyone to use the blog route.

Think of it this way -- from the Internet standpoint, we have e-mail for one-to-one communications -- forums for one-to-few communications -- and blogs for one-to-many communications. Using the wrong tool for any task is like using a pliers to drive a nail.