One of the things that tends to worry those people taking an interest in blogs is this: Are they like the internet in 1996/97 - something that is about to become huge? Or are they like Wap in 1999, or 3G in 2000 - a lot of hype meeting a wall of indifference. My bet is they are going to be big for a simple reason. The technologies that work are those that allow us to talk to each other more - since communicating is what human beings like to do best. E-mail became huge because it allowed us to talk to each other (without it, many of us might not bother with the internet). Mobile and text messaging took off for the same reason. So did file sharing, and now Skype. Wap and 3G - and indeed most early websites - were just static, one-way information. The point about blogs is that they are a conversation, and, as it used to say in the BT ads, we all love to talk. For that reason, they’ll end up being as big as the internet itself.

31 August is significant date on the blogging calender for another reason apart from Blogday (see below). It  is the last day of Darren Rose’s "31 Days to Build a Better Blog"  on his Problogger blog.

Apart from giving us all the benefit of his own wisdom and experience acquired while building a profitable blog network, Darren has succeeded in networking in readers to provide their own ideas.   On Day 3 he linked to our own "Top Ten Tips" and I am amazed to see readers are still clicking through to that page and leaving comments. His obviously has a huge and growing band of disciples. 

Businesses who start blogging have to overcome some psychological hurdles.  One consists of realising that it’s not all about tooth and claw competition.  The power of blogging lies in linking and networking.  Dell failed to understand this when they thought that a lone blogger (Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine) was buzzing in their hair and was no more than an irritant.   They didn’t see that others would link to him and run with his "Dell Hell" campaign. Things can really take off on the web by contagion.  Business blogs can be a form of viral marketing.

Today is Blogday as organised by Israeli ‘innovation evangelist’, Nir Ofir.  His idea is that every blog should link to five new blogs on 31 August.  So far the UK and the US  have been underwhelmed by the scheme, but elsewhere in Europe and Asia bloggers are throwing parties and get-togethers. visit Nir’s wiki for more information.

In honour of  Blogday I’m going to spend some time later today working on our Links / Blogroll page. It’s quite extensive already.  In particular I will be looking  for podcasts and fund manager blogs.  I’m interested to see whether compliance regulations hinder fund managers from blogging.  If anyone has any thoughts on financial regulations and blogging, please drop me a line or leave a comment.

Jeff Jarvis of the Buzmachine blog wanted to get his Dell Computer fixed.  He is far from satisfied with Dell’s customer service and has been blogging about why he thinks Dell ’sucks’ for a while.  Dell did not seem to realise that he has a lot of readers, including some very influential ones among the meda.

Now Jeff has been writing in the Media Guardian about how he has slogged Dell on his blog. (You need to register with the Media Guardian to read the article).  So the story has crossed from the US to the UK. BusinessWeek had already given Dell some unwanted publicity as had technology magazines and other media.

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Who thinks blogs are important?  Well, clearly the world’s richest man does.  Bill Gates has just given an interview to Engadget.  (Engadget is a leading blog that writes about electronic consumer stuff and lives off advertising.)

The best reason to blog is probably to spread peace and harmony around the world, but it’s also true that a blog can be a pretty handy weapon  in a fight.

The Guardian’s Newsblog has a good account of  how the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and its unions are both using blogs to slog it out during an industrial dispute. 

It’s easy to see why every trade union should have a blog.  Blogs are great for promoting causes and getting people involved. 

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The economics team at Deutsche Bank have just published a note analysing the rapid growth of corporate bogs (you’ll find it at www.dbresearch.com). Their conclusion? "We believe there is scope - even if limited - for using corporate blogs". They suggest customer relationship blogs for new products, and CEO blogs for image-building and agenda setting. They also have some origninal ideas - for example, blogs could be an essential tool for crisis management.

The endorsement of Deutsche Bank is more example of how corporate blogs are shifting into the mainstream. 

Back from holiday, I discovered that my personal site has been on the receiving end of a sustained spam attack.  The first was an attempt by a spam-cyber-machine to plant 20 comments about online poker, strip-poker, etc.  The next consisted of an amazing 72 tries.  And now I note a smaller shot at planting something about loans.

But before we query the Almighty about why in his divine wisdom he permits so great an evil as spam to exist in his almost perfect blogosphere,  consider this: for every **** in the world there’s an angel.   There are altruistic wonks and techie-types who spend hours and hours of their time devising free tools for us to use on the internet. 

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Umbria Comminications, a new start-up in the U.S., has and interesting take on bogs. It is using them as a giant focus group, trawling the web using its own software to create reports on what is exciting the market and what isn’t. Feedback is emerging I think as the one thing that blogs have over other types of marketing. It is a great pool of opinion, from which companies can learn. The interesting point, however, is going to be whether can use blogs to shape opinion as well.

The American billionaire Mark Cuban has given an interesting example of one of the things a company can do with its own blog. On his blogmaverick.com site he takes issue with the headline on a story about him in the New York Times. Rather than rant and rave, he just re-produces the text of the interview and let’s people decide for themselves whether the NYT spun the story or not.

There is no need here to get into the rights and wrongs of the issue. What it does do is show us how a company can use a blog to balance up the way it is reported. Journalists might be a lot more careful about twisting an interview to suit their own agenda if they suspected the transcript might end up on a blog. It is all part of the process by which blogs, if used intelligently, can shift power back towards companies.  

There is an interesting discussion on marketingsherpa.com about whether blogs can take the place of press releases. Customer discussions on a corporate blog, it suggests, can help to interest the media in a product. It can point then to case studies. And a blog can provide back-up and examples for a trend story that might feature a company’s products. Given that most press releases end up in the bin - or in the delete tray - maybe press offices should be thinking more about blogs as an effective way to get their message across.