I started blogging relatively recently, which means that while my audience has been increasing steadily, it is still relatively small. That is why I was quite surprised to see the response I got to my most recent posts.
Two days ago, I wrote about a web-site called yourminis.com. It is a great site and I highly recommend it but, in my commentary I mentioned some small problems as well as some wishes for future releases. I was very surprised to see that I almost immediately got a post from one of the developers addressing the issues and telling me that indeed a future version of their site would include some of the features I wanted to see implemented. I was shocked. Sure, my site is listed on technorati, but even so, they must have been doing some serious blog monitoring to find my post that quickly.
Yesterday, I wrote about the motives that may have pushed Adobe to publish a beta version of Photoshop CS3. Sure enough, I almost immediately got a response from someone claiming to be an Adobe employee. In this case, finding the post may have been easier since my post was mentioned on digg. It is therefore possible, and even likely, that this particular Adobe employee just stumbled upon the article while looking for technology news. Even so, the fact is that he took time to write a post and tried to diffuse some of my speculations by stating Adobe’s position.
The point is that companies, large and small are listening to what is being said in the blogosphere. They know that if they want to be successful they have to both leverage the positive comments as well as address the issues before they grow out of proportions. Bad comments can have terrible consequences. Take for example the recent Forrester study that alleged a sharp drop in sales at the iTunes store. Even though Apple denied the story, it was too late. By that time, newspapers everywhere had published the story, which bloggers had made popular over the Internet, and Apple’s stock was down 3%. Even though this mishap was short lived, the stock returned quickly to its previous value, it is clear that bloggers are gaining a growing influence. This fact cannot be ignored by corporations and small companies alike and some are starting to act. Companies like relevant noise or cymphony are capitalizing on these new needs to grow a business. I can’t blame them, it is obviously a market that should experience explosive growth over the close future.
January 11th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
Thanks for the mention, Huibert. Here’s the irony: I work for relevantNOISE, and I found your post a month late on Technorati.
This of course, is not a reflection of the relevantNOISE technology (which is pretty awesome, if I do say so myself)– it’s a little more about personal bandwidth and holiday backlog!
Thanks again!