[Updated Oct 25 2005 to include Weinberger's comments]
Following are my session notes on David Weinberger's keynote on Day 2 of Blogon2005. They are being cross-posted at One Degree, along with the rest of my session notes.
BlogOn 2005 Presentation:
What Blogs are Not.
David
Weinberger - Fellow, Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society and
co-author of the Cluetrain Mainfesto
The first
half of Weinberger’s talk was about what blogs are not. [Note: I think he addressing his talk to
marketers trying to understand how to enter the blogosphere (either as
participants or observers); he’s not trying to describe the blogging process to
the general public.]
First,
blogs are not “About Cats” (aside: cat blogs got picked on a lot). The point here (I think) is that blogs are
not about one defined interest. Blogs
are not the Encyclopedia Britannica where topics are carefully selected and
documented – topics of general broad interest. Blogs are more like a distributed Wikipedia
(a place where you can have entries about Heavy Metal Umlauts),
a place where multiple interests intersect. Blogs have multiple pages on multiple topics. They are *expressed* multiple interests that
individuals have.
Second,
blogs are not journalism. They don’t (necessarily)
compete with journalists (and journalists actually regard some blogs akin to
“stringers” (leads for stories)). Blogs
really function as a managing editor in
a publication. Blogs comment on and
filter the facts and news that come from journalists. Commentary, reflection and analysis – rather
than news – that is the blogosphere’s function. [Side note – Weinberger also had a discussion about The Long Tail
phenomenon. If you’re not familiar with
the Long Tail, you can read Chris Shirky’s original article on the long tail of
weblogs
or the full Wikipedia article on the Long Tail which includes links to Chris Anderson’s Long Tail blog and other economic
discussions).
Third,
blogs are not Mass Media (One to Many). Nor (surprising to some) are they vehicles for One to One marketing or
for personalization. Blogs are places
where individuals have conversations, places where people talk to each other. So the model is really a Some-to-Some model
for communication.
Fourth,
blogs are not about single individuals. I found this to be a “light-bulb” moment for me. He believes that as bloggers, we are in the
process of constructing a new public-self. A process that is taking place *while* we already have a public
self. This is unprecedented in human
history on such a large scale (me: people have had multiple-selves before, but
limited perhaps to con artists). This
construction-of-self (where “my blog” = “me”) is one reason we feel so attacked
when someone criticizes our cat blog.
[Aside:
I’ve been nursing an ongoing confliction
about which public-self to construct in my blog – is it a “professional”
public-self or a “personal” public self. I still find this a tricky question. Am going to follow up with Weinberger on this.]
Weinberger
then went on to describe what blogs *are* and why it may be difficult for
marketers to understand/use them successfully.
First, blogs
are written quickly (often with poor spelling and poor grammar). As a result, we see a more intimate side of
the blogger than we would typically expect. As a blogger, we approach our audience with a sense of pre-emptive
forgiveness. It is this assumed
forgiveness that allows us a level of comfort about our shared intimacy (the
perfect virtuous circle). Our
presumption is that audiences will forgive our spelling errors if we correct
ourselves in a transparent way.
[My
extension on this is that our audiences will forgive us our factual errors as well if
we correct ourselves in a transparent way. Different bloggers have different standards around factual correction. This is something that is much more serious than
spelling and grammatical errors and will need to be pushed by the blogosphere.]
Second,
good blogs are constantly encouraging people to leave. Good blogs are rich in descriptive and
annotated links. Contrast to a publication
like the New York Times which encourages people to stay.
[David posted the following comments on the cross-post at One Degree. I thought it important to include them here.]
Fourth
(and a close cousin to multi-subjectivity), blogs allow for
multi-dispute-ism. In short, blogs allow
for us to have our different opinions (as well as our ambiguities). No one needs to win. Blogs allow for combatants to simply let an
argument go and drift apart. There is no
“let’s take this outside.” [Me: I think a lot of this has to do with the
availability of the medium. I have
access to a similar set of publishing tools as, say, the New York Times. I may not have the *brand recognition* of the
Times, but I have the equivalent distribution mechanism and potential
audience. This leveling of the distribution
channel goes a long way towards feeling less combatative.]
Finally,
blogs are not about *you* (where “you” = “your company”). Old Model: Fort Business. The company controlled absolutely what info
went outside the company and what their employees said. Customers could not easily share
information. New Model: Networked Markets. Customers know more about your products and
your business than you do. And they are
connected. Companies need to move away
from Fort Business in order to be successful in the blogosphere.
Following
this, Weinberger offered an action plan:
1. Start
blogging internally. It’s better than
KM systems. Practice, see what works,
see what doesn’t.
2. When
moving to external blogging, four steps:
- Listen:
listen to what people are already saying in the blogosphere about your company.
- Audit:
(in a non-threatening way) find out who is already blogging in your
company. Someone certainly is.
- Engage:
Find the right people in your organization. Not your CEO, not sr. mgmt, and likely not marketing. People who like customers and who like to
talk to them. Product engineers are a
good start.
- Give Up
Control: hardest message. There is no
control in the blogosphere. You don’t
own your brand, customers do. And if you
can’t give up control, then now is not the time to start blogging.
3. Make
your mistakes and move past them. Weinberger asserts confidently that corporate bloggers will make two: 1)
We will believe that we know more than our customers and 2). We will be boring.
4. Understand that blogs need real voice (not just a canned, controlled corporate voice) and they need to be engaged in a conversation (not in *telling*).
Great discussion ensued from the audience. Biggest question: OK, but *really* how do marketers engage?
- Maybe a company doesn’t have its *own* blog. Either piggyback on someone who is already blogging in your company and is a trusted voice in your industry, or, see what is happening in your industry and contribute to the conversation.
- Find out what makes people *passionate* in your company – that’s what companies should be blogging about. You should blog because you just *have* to tell someone. What is *interesting* about your company? What do people care about? *That’s* what you blog.
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