User in control, empowerment of the individual are great words and trends which cannot be ignored. It is good that people get a voice. But how about integrity? What if a blogger writes nasty or untrue postings about a company or brand? This will be in the collective brains of the internet forever. OK when it is true, no problem posting that. That’s the voice of an integer person. How can we check integrity, both of the company and the person writing? I think it is hard to do that, but the blogosphere is linking and linking to all kinds of sources. Are they truth, authentic, integer? We discussed this item on blogstorm but not that much.
It is the comment of Shel Holtz on the weblog of Nevon what makes me think again on this subject. Neville has written about a blogger waging war and about a war on a support problems. OK, when it is all true, again no problem. But what if people have bad or untruth ideas….? Just wondering. Do you have an idea? Just wondering.
I think, truths or not about a brand as they are filtered through the web, cannot affect the brand that stands on solid ground.
The first Blogs started off as simple soap box platforms, a single voice that might be heard in a crowd of boxes. Today’s blog features, comment and trackback, allow discussion.
No matter which blog you are reading comments from readers are pretty sparse. One of the reasons someone won’t post a comment to a blog is fear of not understanding the writer or the topic, and of someone unknown who might post after them. The internet has proven to be quite the Wild Wild West and blog readers’ fears are not unfounded. The duty is upon the writer to provide a clear platform free of most common threats to its readers and posters.
The art of blog is not an easy one, it requires a team of craftsmanship by the writer, encouraging interface design and poster-determination by the web designer. When more readers start posting back to blogs the real blog power of the internet honesty, truth and fairness will be actualized for the brands.
on lurkers:
http://www.adquack.com/article33.html