Thursday, August 11, 2005
Excellent response to "Blogging is risky" argument
Oh the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt! Oh, the Humanity!
Sorry for the drama, but really I expected to hear such cries, or at the very least "the sky is falling" after Jeff Clavier pointed me toward this piece on why one shouldn't blog as a professional (target audience: VCs/entrpreneurs.)
Irony alert: Of course this piece is published in, wait for it, a blog.
Luckily Jeff pointed me toward this as part of his very able and articulate rebuttal to all the Blogging FUD on display.
You know people, including business people, can find myriad ways to shoot themselves in the foot. They can do this with blogging, no doubt. But they somehow managed to do it way before blogging became their channel.
Here's my case in point for the day: George Gilder.
5 years ago he bestowed heaping praise on a company for which I worked, and our stock soared. You don't even want to know how high it went while I was not vested, and how low it had sunk again by the time I vested. Not to mention how low it eventually went rendering those ten of thousands of options that were going to make me rich completely worthless. (Me an many others, yes I know.) Gilder touted that company and several others...none of which turned out to be long-term good picks, most of which became short term good picks based on his newsletter (yes, a newsletter, much like a blog only slightly different channel.)
Gilder then went off the radar screen for a while, for a few years actually. Smart move. But now I've noticed he's back, baby. He's a new darling on AlwaysOn...again making bold predictions about the future of, in this case, television. Somehow he survived the horror of being "publicly wrong."
People will shoot themselves in the foot; they'll be wrong. They've done it before, and they will continue to do it with or without blogging in the future.
It's just a tool people, use it wisely.
Sorry for the drama, but really I expected to hear such cries, or at the very least "the sky is falling" after Jeff Clavier pointed me toward this piece on why one shouldn't blog as a professional (target audience: VCs/entrpreneurs.)
Irony alert: Of course this piece is published in, wait for it, a blog.
Luckily Jeff pointed me toward this as part of his very able and articulate rebuttal to all the Blogging FUD on display.
You know people, including business people, can find myriad ways to shoot themselves in the foot. They can do this with blogging, no doubt. But they somehow managed to do it way before blogging became their channel.
Here's my case in point for the day: George Gilder.
5 years ago he bestowed heaping praise on a company for which I worked, and our stock soared. You don't even want to know how high it went while I was not vested, and how low it had sunk again by the time I vested. Not to mention how low it eventually went rendering those ten of thousands of options that were going to make me rich completely worthless. (Me an many others, yes I know.) Gilder touted that company and several others...none of which turned out to be long-term good picks, most of which became short term good picks based on his newsletter (yes, a newsletter, much like a blog only slightly different channel.)
Gilder then went off the radar screen for a while, for a few years actually. Smart move. But now I've noticed he's back, baby. He's a new darling on AlwaysOn...again making bold predictions about the future of, in this case, television. Somehow he survived the horror of being "publicly wrong."
People will shoot themselves in the foot; they'll be wrong. They've done it before, and they will continue to do it with or without blogging in the future.
It's just a tool people, use it wisely.
// posted by ElisaC @ 1:34 PM 
