I'm listening to Anil from Six Apart and Jim Coudal on the Blogging for Business conference call among some others. There are 163 people on the call at this moment. The number of curious people on the sidelines is enormous (maybe good tailwind for my Learning Annex class on Blogging for Success... which is on March 16th, btw... details to come soon, but save the date!).
Its interesting to see businesses feel out exactly how they are going to use blogs... since this medium originally developed around individuals and bubbled up as oppossed to trickling down from the big guys.
"... Blogs are an opportunity to demonstrate authority on a subject in a very personal way... blogs have personality." - Jim
Anil made a good point about blogs are transparency and how transparency helps build brand...
What really strikes me, as Anil is discussing it, is how positive a medium blogging is turning out to be. Instances of positive commentary, trading links, creating interesting discussion, etc. seems to completely dwarf negative instances of commentary, personal criticism, content spamming, etc. I think part of that comes from the fact that the medium tends to focus more on bringing like minded people together. Chances are, if you're reading a blog, you're already interested in a topic and have a similar perspective as the writer.
Content is definately king... "Blogs without good content are like a guitar in the hands of someone who can't play." - Jim
I got my RSS analogy into the meeting comments... "If web content is pizza, then HTML is like sitting down to eat it in the pizzeria, and RSS is like getting a pie "to go". "That's gold, Jerry... GOLD!"
Thanks guys... Great job.