Blogging seems to be taking on a greater emphasis in successful businesses these days. With key players like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft having corporate blogs. I think that this is definetly a great step forward in reaching out and understanding users. In the past the only way you could interact with users was from official research programmes, or via company message boards (if you were even allowed to), but now product people can interact with their audience (the users) over blogs, and discuss things like new features and product usage problems.
I guess the next step is to get the public at large onto these blogs to leave comments. I think to the average person this is the scary part, as blogs have somewhat inherited the forum type feel, where only techy “geeks” would contribute. How do we break down those barriers? that will take some thought…
The idea of community sharing on the web is not a new thing, comapnies like yahoo and AOL have been doing this for a long time, yahoo through its groups products, and AOL through its chat and message boards. The difference now is that now with corporate blogs, we are giving the users direct access to the movers and shakers in busnesses, and we are really giving them the ability to shape the future.
Blogs also allow companies to become humaised in the eyes of the public, and they really do get to see that, hey there is someone on the other side that is listening and responding to me! I guess humans crave for the attention of others and maybe blogging is a way around the “taking to a machine” rage that people get.
