Give Raging Cow A Chance says Doc Searls [Newsfactor] By Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier

Doc Searls initially gave Dr. Pepper's Raging Cow blogging strategy a big thumbs down but is now willing to give Raging Cow a chance.

Searls, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto and a prolific blogger, also said blogs are a marked improvement over static Web pages. <more>

Kudos to Doc for re-thinking his initial position. It is too early in the development of the blogging evolution to automatically think businesses using blog thinking and blog strategies are bad for blogging.

The very introduction of Raging Cow at this early stage in the evolution of blogging is a positive sign compared to what happened back in 1994 in email marketing. Anyone remember when a couple of immigration lawyers in Arizona (I think) introduced the world to bulk email garbage - now known as spam? They mailed _thousands_ of emails advertising their immigration practice to any email address that they could harvest! I don't know if they raised any clients but they sure received a bunch of anger and publicity and they even published a book on event.

Spamming differs from blogging in one critical factor- choice.

None of us have a lot of choice about the spam that we receive, but we do have the choice to avoid blogs that do not provide valuable information or content to our lives.  Spam bad - blogging good.

Blogging is about interesting or informative content and credibility. Dr. Pepper isn't hiding the fact that they are creating a fictional back-story and using established bloggers to join in the fun and, as far as I know, they haven't spammed anyone. If I don't like stories about fictional cows then I can choose to ignore the blog.

As an independent consultant specializing in online marketing strategies and responsible email marketing, I know first-hand  that for the past few years the most frequent request that I received was "Can you help me to spam?" If I had a buck for every time that question came up...but that is why I got out of email marketing - too often people automatically think spam these days.

For the last 9-months I have focused on the responsible business uses of blogging. I have talked with hundreds of people interested in business blogging and not one has asked how to use blogging in a deceptive way!

Every blog and blogger gains as blogging gains in popularity. Businesses joining the blogging wave don't take anything away from anyone. If you don't want to drink milk that is _raging_ then let your fingers walk somewhere else.

I'll end this with the question: would you rather have 1) a Russian mail order bride via email 2) an email from highly horny housewife that is available with a single mouseclick or 3) a Raging Cow that you can ignore until your kids get thirsty?

John Lawlor - raging from Boca Raton, FL 2003-03-12

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