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Monday, January 13, 2003
 

Industry Analyst Bloggers

Press Release: Jupiter Research Announces the Launch of Analyst Weblogs

Jupitermedia Corporation today announced that its Jupiter Research division will be the first research advisory firm to offer dedicated research analyst Weblogs. The new Web site at features Weblogs authored by senior Jupiter Research analysts and will offer timely access to analysis on breaking news, events and announcements. Each analyst will keep a frequently updated Weblog that will include interesting links, running commentary, personal thoughts and essays providing thought provoking insight that will enhance Jupiter Research's products.

"The addition of the Weblogs allows us the opportunity to engage our clients in new ways and to share our insight with the world," said Jupiter Research Director Michael Gartenberg. "Launching the Weblogs continues Jupiter Research's history of covering, as well as embracing new Internet technologies," said Gartenberg.

Oddly they've even felt the need to start a weblog covering Online Advertising and Marketing - I mean whose going to read that? ;-) [MarketingFix]

About time.  What a natural.

UPDATE: David offers some advice for Jupiter's bloggers.


3:54:38 PM    comment []

Startup Weblogs

One of my consulting clients and a friend of mine who is starting a new company share the same challenge.  They are both startups looking to launch a new website and I pursuaded them to launch weblogs instead.  The reason isn't just that its damn simple and cheap.  Its the externalities of the process.  When someone is engaged in blogging they are learning by doing, the tacit is made explicit.  And they aren't doing it alone.  No matter how niche their focus is they will find themselves in conversation clusters, perhaps with potential customers and partners.  And these conversations, their words and their link structures permiate the web to attract searchers outside their sphere. 

Dan Bricklin provides some great examples of how small businesses can use weblogs.  Startups have even better reasons, as they usually have unique entreprenurial and expert voices.  They have a real chance for, dare I say, thought leadership, as well as contributing to the diversity of the medium.  I am reccommending to them that they start with a collaborative blog, where many employees are contributing posts.  At first this may seem risky.  Words can be damaging.  But with all the electronic modes of communication, most any words can end up in the public sphere.  And its better to have a dialogue on propriety early.  A startup collaborative weblog provides an opportunity to build a culture that is conscious of what it shares while encouraging sharing.

The initial opportunity for these startups is to create something dynamic and valuable to engage the world.  But once the process of production takes root, participants will demand internal weblogging.  At that time both companies will have grown a little and have more need for internal sharing.  And the real benefits will take hold.


3:07:25 PM    comment []

Doc Edges Ahead
Doc Searls on Edging ahead, puts Jon Udell's weak ties article (see mine) in deeper perspective.

Shared consciousness is fuzzy stuff, but what we know truly matters. Blogging is a huge part of the new social fabric that is knitting itself all around the world of ends that comprises the Web.

I wrote about that in my Release Early Release Often post back in June 2001. There's a matrix there, borrowed from John Seely Brown, that sorts explicit and tacit knowledge into personal and social quadrants. What makes blogs so powerful, I think, is that they feed socially held tacit knowledge (what we know) with an abundance of explicit (what I know) stuff.

Here's what JSB said, long before weblogs showed up:

In essence the Web augments the knowledge dynamics of a region, increasing its diversity (serendipity) and expanding its learning resources by leveraging local expertise — in a lightweight way — for mentoring. More generally, it enhances the fluid boundaries between knowledge production and knowledge consumption and between the local and the virtual. The Web helps to build a rich fabric that combines the small efforts of the many with the large efforts of the few. It enables the culture and sensibilities of the region to evolve, not only by enriching the diversity of available information and expertise, but it tightens the feedback loops of bootstrapping. It increases the intellectual density of cross linkages. And it enables learning to happen everywhere‹a learning ecology. And the lurking (or informal benchmarking) that happens in local hangouts can now get augmented by the Web, one feeding the other. In other words, a self-catalytic system starts to emerge reinforcing and extending the core competencies of the region.

He goes on to predict weblogs...

...This is also, I believe, the idea behind smart mobs, moblogging and the transformation of companies from the forts they were to the social organizations they have to become if the best-learning (and best-teaching) employees are going to bother working for them...[The Doc Searls Weblog]

 


2:47:38 PM    comment []


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