Morning Coffee Notes - Converse with us
Good, Dave Winer has returned to text format (at least for today) for his morning coffee notes. That means I can link to it. He wrote this morning:
"Every company, not just tech companies, needs to have a presence in the blogging world, someone whose feet are planted both in the network outside the organization as well as inside. [...] Only Microsoft and perhaps Yahoo have this. Even Google can't be accessed over the web, and definitely not Apple."
It's Monday morning as I write this and I've just had my coffee, so here are my notes on this matter. Microsoft and Yahoo both have a large presence in the blogosphere - indeed over the past year or so I've gotten to personally know many people from both companies. I have a particular affinity to Yahoo, perhaps because it's an excellent mix of New Media and Web Technology. Anyway, my point is that as I've gotten to know people from Yahoo and Microsoft, those companies have become much more 'human' to me. We have conversations on the Web and offline too. Everybody benefits in some way - e.g. they get ideas and feedback from their users, we get new products that better suit our needs. It's a very symbiotic relationship.
Compare that to Google. As of this date I don't know a single person from Google. I hope at least some of them read my blog, but not one has ever emailed me or commented on my blog or linked to me. Ordinarily I wouldn't expect any of those things, but when you consider how much attention (that word again) I've gotten from Yahoo and Microsoft people via my blog - well, one begins to wonder where all the Google bloggers are.
Maybe I can start the conversation with Google folks by extending a simple invitation - ping me at readwriteweb AT gmail.com (see I use your products!). Let me know what's happening inside Google, what you're thinking about. I'm sure we have a lot in common. Converse with me - and other bloggers like me. You may be surprised to find that we can help each other.
And lest I be seen to be picking on (or sucking up to) Google, I extend that invitation to ANY and ALL Web 2.0 companies. Join the blogosphere. Talk with your users, find out what makes us tick. Because it works both ways - we also find out what makes YOU tick and so we better understand each other.
Thus endth this sermon from The Father of Web 2.0.
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
To correct Dave Winer (his site appears to be being debugged as I write this), Apple does utilize blogging, but in a different sort of way. Check out: http://education.apple.com/students/blog/
It isn't the corner of the blogosphere that you, me, or Dave is in, but it is in a far larger portion of the blogosphere than I think many people realize: student bloggers: closer to the "teenage girl" region of the blogosphere, but not quite there.
Google interacts with all of our blogs (or at least my blog) every day in a way that Yahoo and Microsoft are only now begining to catch up with: Google delivers hits to our blogs.
And Apple has enough affectionados blogging that most of the time it has enough of a voice. Half of Apple's mystique is that people spend so much time guessing what they'll be coming up with next, and often enough Apple delivers more. That generates enough traffic on the blogosphere to suit Apple's purposes, and if they opened things up as much as what I imagine you all are talking about, this would really detract from that.
Yes, I purposely didn't mention Apple because of those reasons. I don't think Apple necessarily needs blogging, because they already have a very passionate user base.
Re Google, they certainly do deliver in the hits department. Don't think I'm not grateful ;-) But I do feel they potentially could benefit a great deal by conversing with us via blogs. Maybe they don't need us now, because they're so technically innovative on their own, but in terms of developing good customer relations I feel they've dropped the ball.
As Sir Clive Woodward probably now realises (coach of the British and Irish Lions, who were THRASHED by the NZ All Blacks 48-18 on Saturday), goodwill and an open attitude pays off in the long run. :-)
I agree with you on the interactivity of podcasts. It's really a form of distributed broadcasting vs. a way of interacting.