Mighty corporations ignore the whispers on web diaries at their peril. Sean Hargrave reports on how the big brands are logging on to save face. They were once seen as the preserve of the geek, but nowadays personal opinion and diary pages - weblogs or "blogs" - are so powerful that huge corporations are taking an interest. The sites that started as observational home pages for enthusiasts have become so powerful that they are starting a new industry of blog monitoring in which media companies scour the net to advise brands on how their name is being talked about online, away from the traditional newspaper and broadcast media sites. The thinking behind this emerging service industry is simple. While there were only 130,000 sites four years ago, today there are about 10m. These web pages can make or break a company's reputation because they provide links to one another and allow people to comment on postings
posted by Marcus Zillman |
4:00 AM
