(Image from BusinessWeek, May 2nd 2005)
BusinessWeek Gives Birth to a New Blog
Jessi Hempel and Helen Walters of BusinessWeek have started a new blog dedicated to innovation tools and trends. Dubbed NEXT, the blog makes it's debut with posts such as Design is Dirty and From Goldman Sachs to Kabul. This blog is one to watch, not only because of the content--but also because Jessi and Helen have been following blogs themselves for some time and get the concepts of dialogue and community. They've already been very responsive in the initial comments. Check it out.
Welcome "Conversation Architects"
The Chicago Sun Times covers SOBCon 07:
"To these believers, a blog exists more as a virtual storefront where small-business owners and independent proprietors can communicate with existing and potential customers in ways otherwise not possible. Frequency of posts, e-mail newsletter-distribution practices and incorporating podcasts and video streams were among the topics at the conference."
When Trains Fly
Advertising Age publisher Scott Donaton has started a blog under the Adage moniker. Here's part of the story behind the name "When Trains Fly"
"Forty-seven years ago, Theodore Levitt posited in "Marketing Myopia," an essay in the Harvard Business Review, that industries risk obsolescence when they forget what business they're really in, and he chose the railroads to illustrate his point. Train lines didn't stop growing because of competition from airlines, he wrote, but because fat-and-happy railroad tycoons forgot what it was they actually did for a living."
"It's a safe bet that few of today's marketing and media tycoons have read Levitt's essay. But the question of what they do for a living is one with which nearly everyone who earns a paycheck in those businesses has become intimately, if uncomfortably, acquainted. That's especially true as the consequences of the digital-technology boom have begun to be felt where they most hurt: on the bottom line."
Tip of the hat to Jaffe for this one.
Hmmm. Just thought of something now that I've compiled this list. They all have something to do with business, blogging and the legitimizing of the medium. Maybe the words "blog" and "blogging" are still dirty--but the act itself isn't anymore.
