The Greatest Trade Show and Circus On Earth

Posted on November 9, 2005

BusinessWeek's Stephen Baker, who also blogs at Blogspotting with Heather Green, has a good article about how startups can use the blogosphere to promote their new company providing they are aware of the risks involved. Baker gave this "biggest trade show on earth" explanation of the blogosphere.

While many traditional businesses can afford to take a wait-and-see attitude toward blogs, it's a different story for buzz-hungry startups in technology and marketing. The universe of self-published Web logs is the most active and fastest-growing part of the Net. The blogosphere brims with contacts, potential customers, and fresh ideas. Done right, blogging is like setting up a booth in the biggest trade show on earth -- every single day.

That reminds us of P.T. Barnum's slogan "The Greatest Show On Earth." In some ways the blogosphere is both an enormous trade show and a circus. Stephen Baker mentions iFulfill.com as an example of where corporate blogs can go wrong. iFulfill's blog ended up tracking the company's own demise. Lately there are many companies, primarily Web 2.0 companies, blogging about their upcoming launch while they are still forming the company or still writing the code for the new site. While a few of these launches will work most will probably end up disappointing their customers before they even launch a product or service. TechCrunch is a blog that tracks a lot of these Web 2.0 startups.

The article also mentions the Pro-Bloggers Association, which is a new non-profit organization that is "dedicated to developing and promoting the profession of blogging (and related strategies, such as podcasting) as a legitimate business function." You will probably recognize some of the names of the people on the PBA's list of board members and founding members.

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