If you know what a “blog” is, you’re in the elite minority of Americans who are aware of this key source of information and insights. Only 38 percent of all Internet users know what a blog is, according to a study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project released in January 2005.1
However, blogs are an important resource for businesses, and the new tools for tracking them will play a prominent role in marketing research for the rest of this decade. As we analyze this trend, we’ll explore what a blog is, trace the growth of blog creation and readership, explore the tools for exploiting them, and predict where this technology is headed.
If the number of requests for a definition is any indication, the word blog was the most popular and misunderstood term of 2004. It was the most looked-up word on Merriam-Webster’s dictionary Web site in 2004.
Simply put, a blog is a journal that a person posts on the Internet. It is typically updated one or more times each day.
The Drudge Report is one example of a blog [www.drudgereport.com]. Created by Matt Drudge, it provides news, scoops, and gossip, often before the mainstream press reports the same items.
Bloggers can make an impact on politics, business, and the economy. They “toppled Trent Lott as Senate majority leader, made a significant presidential candidate out of Howard Dean, spread the word about Jon Stewart’s appearance on CNN’s Crossfire, kept the Rathergate affair percolating, and triggered a stock market slide by prematurely announcing a [John] Kerry win in the 2004 presidential election,” according to a report in the Ventura County Star.2
Furthermore, companies like Microsoft, Dell, and Sun Microsystems encourage their employees to blog — and to even criticize the companies where they work — as long as they don’t disclose proprietary information or embarrass their employers. However, not every employee blog follows those rules. One Microsoft blogger was fired after he posted a photo of Macintosh computers being delivered to Microsoft. And a Delta Airlines flight attendant lost her job for illustrating her blog with revealing photos of herself that were taken on a...
