Spending time in the Blogsphere

In my last posting I confessed that while I write a blog I don’t spend a lot of time reading others. Well in my efforts to better understand how blogging can be used commercially I’ve been trawling around and reading more blogs.

First thing to observe is that I’m more convinced than ever that RSS is a key technology. Without RSS it would just be impossible to follow what is going on.

One of the places I visited in my blogging travels is Robert Scoble’s blog. I have to say: how does this guy have time to write so much? Let alone do a day job. Not sure I’m impressed so much as wondering: why?

Having surfed around the blogsphere I wish I had more time to read blogs, I think I could give up my life and just read peoples blogs all the time. Don’t know what kind of person that would turn me into - what is the Blog equivalent of Supersize me?

One of the things I found interesting at Scobles blog was the links. First he tipped me off about this site, Second Life that seems to be Snowcrash
Snow Crash come to life. Wish I had to the time to play around with Second Life it looks good.

More usefully Scoble linked over to Nichlas Carrs blog where he gives his Seven Rules for Corporate Blogging. Now that is exactly the kind of thing I’m looking for in my research!

The way I see it blogging has two sides for the corporation. The good side: give your company a human face, hype things up, show honesty, improve recruitment, a dialogue with your customers and so on.

Then there is the negative side: what do other people say about you? how can the blogsphere be used (deliberately or accidentally) to damage your company? And: how you can shoot yourself in the foot.

Of course its not just companies that have this problem. Individuals have the same thing to, maybe I’m just trying to hype myself here, create a buzz about “me” but at the same time I could say something that someone could take offence at, I could say something that would make me unemployable. And then of course, someone else could say something about me I have no control over.

Actually, some of the most interesting things about Carr’s entry are the follow up comments, not least from Scoble!

So, next time I criticise myself for blogging too much I’m just going to remind myself how much other people blog.