The Corporate Blogging War Has Officially Started
Eric Kintz has a provocative post today about a blog slap fight that is breaking out between HP, IBM and Dell over data center cooling claims. What’s interesting is the involvement of ZDNET’s Dan Farber as referee.
This incident poses the question of how an organization can use its blog to bypass the traditional neutral role of the media to take its case to the public without Fourth Estate intervention. Does it? To an extent — the success of a corporate blog in such imbroglios depends on the reader’s appetite for the company line — a form of devalued media ruined over the years by the terrible reputation of public relations. But, if the blogger is working from a position of credibility in the professional and user communities, there is no reason why their claims wouldn’t carry the impact that a neutral observer’s would.
I can recall many a slap fight between two vendors waged — at snail pace — in the pages of PC Week. Without a medium to express themselves, organizations turned to the press. Now they can make their case or counter claims on their own.
As Sam Whitmore said, “We’re all media now.”
Let the fight begin! It was sort of unavoidable, I guess.
The good thing, as Eric states is that “companies will use blogs to engage directly with them in an on-going dialogue and share their own unfiltered perspectives” the bad thing I can foresee (I hope I’m mistaken on this one) is the use of corporate blogs to “turn on the fan” (do you have that expression in English?) and throw crap around. Blogs might loose credibility on the long run as other media already has.
David- thought you would enjoy the back and forth I had with Lionel at Dell yesterday (see comment section on my post) – I really think it’s a healthy competitive dialogue.
Eric