If you can get past the corny lead without puking, the story suggests that Jupiter Research’s blogs are actually driving real business leads:

The at-times offbeat journals are stirring sales leads from clients who otherwise might not have contacted Jupiter, says David Schatsky, chief of research at JupiterMedia’s Jupiter Research unit.
“One example is tech vendors whose marketers are checking to see if Jupiter mentions their products and what we say about them,” Schatsky said.
The company can’t say just how much business the blogs have generated. But Schatsky says scores of potential clients have contacted Jupiter because of the blogs.

Investor’s Business Daily: Blogs Bring A Boost To Jupiter Research

Scanning Userplane’s site, I honestly couldn’t tell you what the hell they do; something about Flash communication apps. A lot of marketing doubletalk, if you ask me. But they blog, which we like. Here’s the “About Us” boilerplate from a recent press release; maybe you can make heads or tails of it:

Userplane is a pioneer in offering Flash-based Web applications that support live text and audio/video communication. Based in Los Angeles, the company is an innovator in enterprise community messaging that enables a broad range of Web sites to run branded communication applications. Using Macromedia’s Flash Communication Server MX technology, Userplane Apps are deployed internationally on sites ranging from online communities to intranets. The application suite reaches tens of millions of users and supports over a million live conversations a month. Userplane continues to provide forward-thinking Web and software development for industry-leading clients including Red Bull, Honda, 1-800 Flowers, and Juicy Couture.

Link

A few months ago, I wrote about the Red Hat World Tour Blog. That apparently worked so well for the Linux services company that they now have a series of blogs, including an Executive Blog. It caught my eye that the first post there is from Michael Tiemann, VP of Open Source Affairs. I wonder if he’s any relations to former NYC mayor Daniel Tiemann for whom the tiny street I live on was named.

Link

Real Networks just started this blog to influence spin in the debate over its recent enabling of its downloadable music files to be played on Apple’s proprietary MP3 player iPod. Real is undercutting Apple’s 99 cent MP3s by selling its music library for only 49 cents each.
UPDATE:
As usual, it seems that I’ve missed the actual story here (the difference being this time I figured it out, sort of, on my own before a bunch of you left comments here calling me dense). It seems that Real started this site as a petition calling on Apple users to support its effort open up its file format to play on the iPod. But it underestimated the fanaticism of Apple users, some 1,000 of whom signed the petition with vile abuse aimed at Real. Details at Micro Persuasion.

Link

Not to be outdone by Google’s blog, Yahoo just launched its own blog. The first post, a bit of self-congratulations about how great Yahoo’s search is, was written by Jeff Weiner, SVP of Yahoo! Search & Marketplace. From the sound of it, however, others will also join in the blogging:

Be sure to check back here for news about new product introductions, updates and exclusive betas.

In addition, this blog is designed to provide a window into what our team is thinking and doing, in their own words (and maybe some guest bloggers as well).

Above all else we hope this blog enables you to share our excitement for the search industry and what the future holds. 

Powered by Movable Type. Funny that they wouldn’t use Blogger, as it’s free

😉 

Comments are turned on and filling up fast.

ClickZ offers additional perspective.

Link

VAR Business points out in this piece that blogs have done something quite remarkable for Microsoft: made it cool.

VAR Business: The Ogre’s New Voice: Can Blogs Save Microsoft’s Image?

The latest blog from Microsoft, this one by the Internet Explorer team.

Link

Duly noting another business blog from a well-known firm.

Link

Just noting, as I should have earlier, a series of developer blogs from IBM.

Link

An anonymous blogger (as far as I can tell) at SciFiHiFi.com, who is apparently an Apple employee, makes a case against business blogging. His (? her?) jumping off point is a recent post by PR specialist and blog evangelist Steve Rubel titled “Why Apple Employees Will Blog in Revolt”. While Rubel suggests Apple should be blogging, as I also did recently, SciFiHiFi guy disagrees, suggesting that not blogging is part of Apple’s “Think Different” mystique.

Obviosly, I don’t agree, but the post is worth reading, if just for the contrarian argument. One point he/she makes is “I personally think that every official corporate weblog I‚Äôve ever seen (from Microsoft‚Äôs Channel 9 to the Google Blog) has come across as rather contrived and trendy.” True, that’s a danger of some blogs (though I happen to like Channel 9, even if I don’t often read it; Google Blog, on the other hand, is certainly a disappointment), but he/she conveniently overlooks some much better business blogs, most notably in the context of Microsoft being Robert Scoble’s, which is widely read and respected.

Anyway, SciFiHiFi’s implication is that there is a danger for a company like Apple, the success of which relies in large part these days on underpromising and over-delivering (according to its fan base, anyway), is that a blog would reveal too much. I never get this argument against business blogs. You trust employees to grant interviews to the NY Times and the WSJ and not to reveal too much in the face of touch questions from seasoned jouranlists, don’t you? Why then should some trusted employee not be able to keep their mouth shut about company secrets on a weblog? The blog could be about any number of things other than company secrets and new feature previews, such as a showcase of “Made on a Mac” projects around the web, or whatever.

Also, SciFiHiFi makes the case that corporations are not people and they shouldn’t try to sound like people, hence business blogs sound artifcial. But the whole point of a good company blog, like Scoble’s, is it’s clearly written by a person with an individual point of view, thereby humanizing the company, as we all know that companies are made up of individuals. Given that Apple all but invented the job title of “evangelist,” I think it’s conspicuous that they don’t have a blog. “Think Different” is fine when it makes strategic sense, but don’t go against the flow just for brand consistency even when it’s not the right thing to do.

(But don’t get me started on Apple; I’m a former Apple die hard who was eventually dragged onto the PC by an old job, and no amount of trend ads will ever get me to switch back to Mac. But that’s another story.)

Sci-Fi Hi-Fi: Redmond Blogs, Cupertino Codes

It really is remarkable how cool Microsoft is about blogs. This post on Community Kitchen explains:

We just launched the Microsoft Community Blogs Portal, a searchable listing of blogs by Microsoft employees, categorized by product or technology topic. The project also makes it easier for pages across Microsoft.com to publish lists of relevant blogs and posts from those blogs.

Isn’t this the kind of thing you’d expect from Apple, considering how innovative they’re supposed to be and all (yet, do they actually do anything with blogs as a company?).

Thanks again to Olivier for the link.

Link

Jonathan Schwartz

Jonathan Schwartz was appointed president and CEO [make that COO; d’ho!] of Sun Microsystems just this past April, and by June the 38-year-old, ponytailed executive started a blog.

Bill Gates, take note.

Link

It was just a matter of time. A month ago, Microsoft founder and richest man in the world Bill Gates raved about blogs in a speech to business leaders. Now, the Seattle Times is suggesting Bill may launch his own blog imminently.

Seattle Times: Bill Gates Could Join the Ranks of Bloggers

Well, ever since we spotted the trial blog at Google a few weeks ago, we knew this was inevitable. The Google Blog was born on May 10th. Disappointing there hasn’t been a new post yet today — seems like they’d have a lot to talk about, but I wonder whether it will end up being a more occasional blog, like Blogger’s own blog. Another peculiarity of the blog seems to be that there is no obvious author. The first post (see below) is from Evan Williams, appropriately enough, creator of blog software tool Blogger.com, which Google acquired last year. But we know this only because he signed the post within the body of the post. The footer information about each post does not contain an author identification, so the second post is anonymous.

Here’s Evan’s first post to the new Google blog:

Ever since I came to Google, they’ve been talking about putting up an official Google blog. And now, less than 15 months later, voil√†.

Oh well, it’s not like we own a recently relaunched service where you can create a blog in two minutes or something. Okay, we do. (Sorry for the plug.) But I guess other Googlers have been a little busy what with all the searching. And the advertising. And filling out purchase orders for all those hard drives.

Anyway, I’m excited the blog’s up. We’re going to post stuff here – regular bloggy things: What Larry had for breakfast. What Sergey thinks of that Hellboy movie. Which Dawson’s Creek character reminds us most of Eric.

And perhaps, news about Google, and our thoughts on whatever random events cross our horizon.

Oh, and we have email feedback too. So we hope to hear from you, as well.

– Evan Williams

(Blogger Program Manager, Google)

ClickZ makes this pertinent observation:

Interestingly, the launch comes as Google is preparing for an initial public offering of stock, during the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) "quiet period" in which companies usually refrain from making public statements that could be interpreted as an offer to sell stock.

CNET’s New.com is already nit-picking at Google’s blog for having discretely edited a post to tone down potentially controversial comments about outsourcing. It’s clear that this blog will remain under a magnifying glass for some time to come, at least through Google’s IPO.

Link

Tim Bray

Along with Microsoft’s Robert Scoble as well as the team from Macromedia, Tim Bray is one of the highest profile bloggers in the tech community, both for the quality of his commentary and the size of the organization he works for: Sun Microsystems, where his title is technology director. Bray, who has been blogging for a few years, just joined Sun two months ago (as of this post). He is a long-time Internet technology pioneer, having co-created XML and previously ran Antarctica, a maker of business intelligence visualization software.

Like many prominent bloggers with prominent jobs, Bray disclaims on his blog, "The opinions expressed here are my own, and neither Sun nor any other party necessarily agrees with them." At the same time, however, he recently helped craft the Sun Policy on Public Discourse, which, in fact, lives on Bray’s blog.

Link

It has been quite surprising that Google has not yet started blogging, given their acquisition last year of Blogger.com, and all, not to mention their perfectly aligned sensibilities with blog culture, or at least one would assume.

Well, it looks like we’ll see something interesting soon. As of this writing, the google.com/blog page says only “test,” but it’s certainly cause for hope.

[UPDATE 5/6/04: This page now comes up as an error. Someone is obviously playing around with something, though. Stay tuned…]

Link

“Commentary on startups, small business, business planning and growth strategy” from the folks at Bplans.com, a business plan resource tool, and Palo Alto Software, a business plan software tool.

Link

CEO Henry Copeland launched this do-it-yourself ad network for blogs nearly two years ago, and at that time there was a fair bit of skepticism that the business would ever pan out. Well, it has. The service now has more than 200 blogs using the system, each of which has at least 3,000 ad impressions each week. Some, such as InstaPundit and DailyKos, have millions of readers per month. The service has proven particularly popular with political advertisers — more than two dozen candidates in the presidental and other races have used it to reach political junkies through blogs. But many smaller and medium-sized companies are also find blogs a great way to advertise niche products. Blogs are ideal “for products that have a sensibility, not commodities, those looking to find audiences with a particular mindset,” Copeland said. Some of the biggest bloggers using the system are now earning thousands of dollars a month in advertising.

I have counseled BlogAds about its overall business strategy.

Link

Judith Meskill

I had the pleasure of sharing a car ride with Judith from Boston to NY after BloggerCon II and got to hear a lot about her remarkable professional background: an impressive mix of executive experience at marketing, operations, technology and more (she programs in something like 8 or more languages, after having been sent to programming classes by the IT department of a F500 company when she worked as a marketer constantly pushing the IT department to outdo themselves with special programming requests).

These days, she’s a high-priced (I’d assume) consultant focused on knowlege and social networking, and other corporate collaboration issues. She also blogs at socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com.

Link

Ross Mayfield

Ross Mayfield is CEO of Socialtext, what I would call knowledge management software, but he’s told me should be called “enterprise social software.” Anyway, Ross is a leading thinker in the space of social software and people-powered publishing (such as wikis, business blogging, social networks). In addition to his personal blog (linked in the headline of this entry), which itself tends to be more about business than his personal life, he also blogs on Social Text’s site as well as part of a great group blog about social software called Many2Many on Corante.

Link