The Debate On Corporate Blogging

Werner Vogels, Amazon's CTO, asks the question to Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, Why should corporations blog? Warner Vogels writes,"We( Amazon.com) have a long history of promoting customers to use their voice about our products and our operations, so if you come to Amazon to tell us our business is going to really suffer if we do not blog, you better be prepared to defend your ideas with very strong arguments and hard evidence. We expect that from anyone, externally or internally, who wants to promote an idea within Amazon. This was my approach with challenging Shel and Robert at our lunch meeting. I wanted them abandon their fuzzy group hug approach, and counter me with hard arguments why they were right and I was wrong. Instead they appeared shell-shocked". He adds,"Beyond "a more human face" and "conversations with individuals from Amazon" there was no real response how blogging will make the product named Amazon.com better for our customers given all the techniques we already use from soliciting customer feedback to discussion forums to snooping weblogs and comments sites, etc."

I like blogging, I support blogging initiatives – but fuzziness in promoting blogs may not help anyone. Scoble and Shel have responded back on the Amazon presentation. Werner Vogels has clearly provided a refreshingly blunt viewpoint.In general, the influence of blogs are certainly bound to increase over time. Scoble and Shel – this would only help in improving the blogosphere effectiveness,take it in the strides and things can only get better.