April 04, 2003
It's not just Big Media that doesn't get it

I'm with Ginger on this one: This has got to be the least clueful article written about blogs that I've ever seen.

Cheryl Currid is of course not writing about blogs from a media perspective but from a business perspective, so I suppose she can be forgiven for not knowing some of the big names. Not mentioning that Movable Type has a commercial license is a more serious omission, the sort of thing that says to me "she didn't do any actual research before she wrote this". We won't even mention the fact that she gave no real suggestion how a blog could be profitably used in a business environment, let alone an example of such a business. Too much information, I guess.

And after all that, she basically admits that she doesn't know what she's writing about when she says that she thinks blogs are "weird". That'll sure get those purchase orders flowing.


Blogs are nonstandard technology. From my perspective, blogs are weird. They can contain inconsequential chatter, prone to individual, not corporate communications, and come out of left field. But that's exactly the direction from which other tsunami business technologies have come.

Is it just me, or does this paragraph sound like something a broker might have said about tech stocks in 1997 or so? "Yeah, I have no idea how Salon.com plans to turn a profit, but by God the Internet is gonna be the Next Big Thing, so you better get on board now!"

Posted by Charles Kuffner on April 04, 2003 to Blog stuff | TrackBack
Comments

Seriously, Cheryl Currid is to business as Dwight Silverman is to the NY Times' Technology section.
I quit reading her a long time ago when I figured out she typically didn't know what she was talking about and that she considered Microsoft the answer to all questions.

Houston's (mis)leading (mis)information source.

Posted by: Charles M on April 4, 2003 12:26 PM

I didn't set out to read her; she was on the back page of the business section, and it said something about blogs, so I had to check it out.

I don't normally read her--in part because she is a big MS ho--but I did this time, and I'm not sorry. Stupidity on the level of this article should be exposed and publicly mocked.

Posted by: Ginger on April 4, 2003 12:38 PM

Oh, and the point about not knowing how to spell Bricklin's name or that Ray Ozzie's blog is defunct is more about her lack of basic research than whether she knows who the big names are. Bricklin and Ozzie are big names, but she uses them so cluelessly that it's obvious she cribbed the names from another source rather than learning them through her research.

Posted by: Ginger on April 4, 2003 12:41 PM

Now, now, Dwight Silverman is a good guy and a friend of a friend, so let's not bash him gratuitously. I generally find him to be readable and not overly in love with one technology at the expense of another.

Currid, on the other hand, is high on my "why are these people getting paid for this crap?" list. And it's a long list, let me tell you.

Posted by: Charles Kuffner on April 4, 2003 12:44 PM

Not trying to bash Dwight gratuitously - I realize who he works for and the constraints he has to deal with. While I've never met him, I've exchanged mail on occasions and talked with him on the phone. Seems nice enough.

This goes back a long time and stems mostly from the fact I think he has a "bully pulpit" to educate Houstonians on the ins-and-out of the technology world: RIAA, MPAA, Carnivore, DMCA and all the other TLAs that are constantly eroding our ability to use the net in ways "unapproved by the rights holder". Instead, he expends the few column inches the Comical gives him on help desk stuff.

For an example, you (and a lot of other blogs) have been talking about the pending bills which (might) outlaw firewalls and NATting. I've yet to see any serious coverage of this in the Chron - Dwight could do a lot to kill this stupidity if he educated his audience.

If I were to ask him, he would say this is a business story and he doesn't get to choose the business stories (we've had this conversation before on a different topic). Sorry. This affects every one of us who use a computer because the bill will ultimately be written to not affect business.

Posted by: Charles M on April 4, 2003 2:46 PM