jr conlin's ink stained banana

i'm guessing that the article about Bill Gates being Pro-Blog, particularly for the workplace, will probably be big news today, particularly with the blogging community.

Personally, i sincerely hope that blogs are taken more seriously buy corporations, but i know full well they won't be. Blogs, to big companies, are PR nightmares, so that means that corporate blogs will be nothing more than press releases done in the first person (if you're lucky). i don't think you're going to find Bill talking about how he had probably the best stinky cheese at a pub in Portland last weekend and now he's been banished from the bed room until he "airs out". Likewise, i don't think you're going to find someone like Terry talking about how Troy was nice and all, but Return of the King had freaking flaming elephants, i mean how cool is that!?

Nope, corporate blogs are going to be like Google's blog (not to be confused with the Googleblog), where anonymous corporate mouthpieces shill out the same sort of stuff that goes to Business Wire.

Too bad really.

i mean, one of the credos of Cluetrain is that people don't trust anonymous companies. They want a personal face tied to a company. In Microsoft's case, that very public face is still Bill Gates, even though Paul Allen is the guy actually running the company. Likewise if you had to think of a name associated with AOL, you'd think Steve Case, right? That's because people trust people.

Ah well, the nice thing is that even without being officially sanctioned, there are a number of blogs that are effectively the voice of a given company. i just wonder if they know it.