As those familiar with this space know, I don’t like to discuss blogging as a technology very much, because it’s too difficult at times to cut through the hype (more here). But wanted to present a few datapoints from the past few days, and let you all draw your own conclusions.
1. As previously mentioned, on the latest Gillmor Gang, Jonathan Schwartz referred to blogs (and podcasting) as not only important, but a potential tidal wave.
2. Several conversations during dinner and cocktail hour at the IBM analyst event were around topics that people had read in my blog. Both work (e.g. thoughts on services) and non-work (e.g. my digital camera) subjects were discussed. Sure beats talking about the weather 😉
3. Three times now in the past two weeks, I’ve worked with different ISV clients to help them engage better with the community. My principle recommendation? Get their developers blogging. One of the best ways to participate in a community conversation is to have a voice, and blogs serve that purpose very well.
4. As follow up from the analyst event, I’m emailing around blog entries as much or more than library publications. They’re great conversation starters.
5. Once upon a time, when I was researching a particular topic or subject, I had to go out and actively hunt down people like Henning Heinz. Now, they very often are able to find me, and share their experiences with the Commons or with me privately using the contact information I provide. It’s amazing how significantly this transforms how I do my job (as an aside, please feel free to contact me on anything you read here – I provide my contact information for a reason).
6. Several times in the past month, reporters have contacted me on topics directly related to items and issues I’ve blogged, and these are not necessarily topics I’m contacted on regularly.
I won’t preach to anyone on blogging (would likely be doing so to the choir here, in any case), and I remain frustrated with claims that it’s the solution to every problem, but I think you can get a sense from these experiences where I stand on the subject of “are blogs important?”
