B-Blogs: they're not just for stutterers anymore!

May 29, 2003 3:50 PM

The Clickz Weblog Business Strategies 2003 Conference & Expokicks off on June 9, with the highly-relevant keynote: "What Are Weblogs?" Also on the schedule: "Business Blogs: Hype or Opportunity?"

Kathleen Goodwin (conference chair) Blogs : "Someone wrote that they are offended that blogs, what used to be "an 'innocent' repository of ideas," are now becoming commercialized. Hello! Get with the program. It is the 21st century and every great idea gets commercialized in a nano second these days."
posted by scarabic (21 comments total)

Can I just say I really, REALLY hate it when people use "Hello" in an exclamative fashion as a 'snappy' comeback. It tends to grate and really cheapen whatever point they're trying to make. It also smacks of smarminess and doesn't work at all in print.

Other than that, I have nothing to say here.
posted by John Shaft at 4:10 PM on May 29, 2003

Booya!
posted by 4easypayments at 4:10 PM on May 29, 2003

fools and their money are parted, again ... damn, I hate sad endings.
posted by MzB at 4:17 PM on May 29, 2003

Yeah - did I neglect to include that they want $895 for this? If it were free, I could sort of imagine showing up just to help this Kathleen person rustle up a clue.

But then, maybe I'm the idiot. I've been blogging for years and never found a way to get people to cough up a grand to talk to me about it.
posted by scarabic at 4:18 PM on May 29, 2003

Forget the "innocent repository of ideas" crap, everything might get commercialized, but that doesn't mean every commercialization of an idea is a good choice. Blogs are not going to make anyone rich, with the slight possibility of very very rare exceptions (like a blog that duped people into thinking you were dying of something and needed financial assistance).
I'll grant that they have some value as a marketing tool for celebrities, like Moby, but beyond that this is just an attempt to milk a nonexistent cash cow.

On Preview: $885 for this thing? Looks like 1 person figured out how to make money off of the blogging craze.. that makes.. 1.
posted by Wingy at 4:21 PM on May 29, 2003

this is just an attempt to milk a nonexistent cash cow

Moo.
posted by Ljubljana at 4:26 PM on May 29, 2003

One upon a time people thought you could make money from an ebusiness named www.allyourpetfood.com. Once upon a time, people thought you could make money from buying and selling domains like www.allyourpetfood.com. Oh sure, there are plenty of opportunities for commercialisation...
posted by Jimbob at 4:31 PM on May 29, 2003

But Dvorak says there will be blogging millionaires next year, so it must be true!
posted by mathowie at 4:33 PM on May 29, 2003

That's a fantastic article, matt.

Did dot-coms lead to blogging? They had to, since Web logs are all about the Web.

What a wonderful leap of logic. Because the web was all about dot-coms as well, wasn't it? I guess it was to people like the author, who seems to have ignored the continued existence of the web, post-dot-coms.

I love his comparison between blogs and CD-ROMs as well. That's surely relevant.
posted by Jimbob at 4:46 PM on May 29, 2003

For the love of Mike, will people please stop using the word "blog"? That has got to be the ugliest word in the English language.

No man, woman, or child has yet used that word in such a way that they didn't sound like an idiot, including myself for having used it in the previous paragraph.
posted by oissubke at 4:54 PM on May 29, 2003

Interestingly, Dvorak and other columnists are probably the closest pre-web equivalent to a bloggers. No? Is that comparison impossible?
posted by scarabic at 4:56 PM on May 29, 2003

Is it a bad thing that businesses are using blogs? Isn't that the type of conversation that the clutrain manifesto was suggesting.

If companies actually open lines of communication with people to deal at arms length with them instead of trying to manipulate them, isn't that a good thing?
posted by bragadocchio at 5:17 PM on May 29, 2003

bragadocchio, I doubt weblogs will represent an "open line of communication". For a start, I doubt many would be allowing open comments on posts. Sequential lists of products being released doet not a weblog make - what are they going to link to? Their own products. News articles about their own products. People using their own products. Sounds like fantastic reading. Simply having a blog does not mean it's going to be anything but cluetrain's "happytalk".
posted by Jimbob at 5:23 PM on May 29, 2003

every great idea gets commercialized in a nano second these days

So why would blogs be commercialized?

I can't stop myself...
posted by solistrato at 6:16 PM on May 29, 2003

Is Ev a millionaire now?

Will Ben, Mena, and Anil be millionaires this time next year?

I can understand there being some people who do become millionaires from blogs, just not all the people doing most of the actual blogging.
posted by briank at 7:03 PM on May 29, 2003

They're not talking about personal blogs making money. They're talking about using blogs in marketing, e.g. having a corporate blog, or doing an industry newsletter, or getting key technical people to blog about their (NDA-monitored) work. These are being called b-blogs or klogs (corporate blogs). Really, they're just newsletters that are being published with those nifty content-management systems that put everything date-backwards.

But never let it be said that Metafilter needed to read the articles before commenting. That would spoil the freak-out.
posted by dhartung at 11:17 PM on May 29, 2003

dan's quixotic fight for rationality continues apace. good luck with that.

back on topic, i hate to break it to you guys, but uh, there are already thousands of business blogs. yeah, yeah, i'm a shill who's pimping a tool that runs a lot of 'em, but the reality is that these are great tools for people to keep track of projects within a company. or to promote. things like Cory's Down and Out site, or Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs site, those are business blogs, not just the raging cow stuff.

I'd find it hard to believe that you guys are all really surprised that businesses will pay to find out better ways to use the tools they've got at hand. That's what conferences are for. Except the Vegas ones, where people go for a pretense to gamble and get hookers.
posted by anildash at 11:36 PM on May 29, 2003

Really, they're just newsletters that are being published with those nifty content-management systems that put everything date-backwards.

That's kind of the point - it's nothing new. I was installing backwards-dating "news" posting applications on corporate websites in 1999, but I didn't consider it a weblog. By its nature, a weblog logs the web. I don't see much scope for businesses (particularly businesses who primary profit isn't in internet technology) to use the "backwards-dating-news-posting-appliation" to do this. I have to admit that the Smart Mobs site (and also, for instance, Naomi Klein's No Logo weblog) are probably the exception - weblogs used to add a new dimension to some creative product. How long will the Smart Mobs site last though? How long does it need to last? Will there still be updates once the book is relegated to the discount bin?
posted by Jimbob at 11:47 PM on May 29, 2003

Quixotacular!

businesses will pay to find out better ways to use the tools they've got at hand

Or failing that, just fire them.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:23 AM on May 30, 2003

what dhartung said.

This conference is about learning how to use blogs within the infrastructure of the company, i.e., using them for project management, team communication, corporate mumbo jumbo. Unless I am mistaken, a business blog is not even intended for viewing by anyone outside the company, it's more of a way to get your business done.
posted by archimago at 6:21 AM on May 30, 2003

Thank goodness this does not conflict with my planned attendance of the 3rd Annual Nigerian Email Conference.
posted by samuelad at 11:31 AM on May 30, 2003