Ignore blogs at your own peril

Pedro de Gouveia of South Africa’s BizCommunity.com has an interesting piece providing a little history on how blogs and how they have changed the way news, entertainment and information, is both shared and consumed.

Blogs may have started as online journals for computer geeks or angst-ridden teens but now they have become a force to be reckoned with in the corporate and political spheres, acting as gatekeepers or even overturning the mainstream media world, ending powerful careers or killing product lines. Yet, understanding and harnessing these new technologies can serve as both an early warning system for what is being said about a company, and as a way for a company to lead the conversation in a manner that positions it as a trusted leader……

Changes in online technology and communication have turned the Internet into a real-time forum. Participants are now as powerful as the traditional media owners and PR spin doctors. Blogs are unmasking scandals, ending careers, and damaging brands. Yet they are also building and strengthening brands. Understanding blogs and their unique culture and voice is imperative; to try and tap into this new format without that insight may lead to an online brand tongue lashing. Ignoring blogs can also leave you at the mercy of the same Gillette Mach3 razor-sharp tongue lashers.

The advent of the web gave birth to millions of new communicators and content providers internationally. The web page format followed the old broadcast model of one source beaming out to many. Chat groups allowed for more of a conversation, but nothing compared to the volume of noise being generated via weblogs. The creation of blogs and wikis has enabled a very different approach: the real-time open forum.

Read the whole article, provides a nice summary of where we’ve been with blogs and where we’re headed. May be hold hat to you guys who’ve been around the corner, but there’s a lot of folks just coming to blogs.