It’s a great place, the blogosphere. Anyone with an opinion about anything can articulate it. And anyone does precisely that, including me.
Thinking about the Windows Vista code rewrite discussion soap opera during these past few days, I’ve been reflecting on the passionate opinions expressed left, right and center in blogs everywhere (including in mine).
Over the past 24 hours, I’ve had a few emails from friends and professional acquaintances offering their views on the matter that, from my specific interest point of view, I believe is the significant one, namely: employee bloggers may have credibility but do they have authority? Shel and I spent a good 25 minutes in yesterday’s edition of our biweekly podcast talking about this point.
The six emails I’ve had so far are divided 33/66 on the issue, ie, two think employee bloggers are the authoritative voice if they are credible; four think credibility does not equal authority, no matter whether they’re official spokespeople or not. (As an aside, it’s interesting that no one has felt inclined to leave their thoughts as a comment to any blog post. And I’m not posting the private comments nor identifying the commenters unless they give me permission.)
I’m glad to have received these opinions, which illustrate the positive aspect of blogs and blogging where you can articulate a different point of view and be part of ongoing and healthy debate and discussion on topical issues.
And then I received this pretty direct opinion this lunchtime from someone who emailed me via the contact page on this blog with a patently-fake email address (heh! “jim at startrek”):
Who the f**k do you think you are? You’re just like those shit journalists Scobles been talking about. You are clueless and you comments in your stupid site don’t impress anyone. So go back to your prick relations job and stop wastin g everyones time.
This comment is verbatim, syntax errors and all, except for my discreet substitution of a couple of asterisks.
Well, Mr 207.226.172.18 (the IP address is the only identifier for jim at startrek), thanks for reading my blog and thanks for your opinion.
I have a pretty thick skin (and wear a bulletproof vest at times) and it’s probably wholly naive to wonder about civility in the blogosphere, although I do my best to practice it.
So as the title of this post says, anything goes in the blogosphere.
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Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.
Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.
