Best blogs for buyers

The best vendor blogs contain hidden corporate and product gems.

By Susan Schaibly, Network World, 02/27/06

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In years to come, this decade might well be known as the Age of the Blog. About 80,000 blogs are created every day, according to Umbria Communications, a new-media monitor. Technorati, the popular blog-tracking site, keeps tabs on 24.9 million sites and 1.9 billion links. The blogosphere is a crowded, noisy place, and IT blogs are everywhere. All of which means that finding the best blogs to track your top vendors can be more miss than hit. Yet blogs can be worthwhile sources of little-known company or product information. We looked through hundreds of blogs about the companies featured here, many written by anonymous bloggers who claim to have inside connections. The following are a sample of the best blogs offering inside skinny.

MICROSOFT

Scobleizer, a Microsoft geek blogger

Robert Scoble is a Microsoft technical evangelist. His blog is a combination of RSS championing, links to news sources and commentary on Microsoft's public triumphs and miscues. Scoble predictably touts Microsoft products, but he also admits a grudging appreciation for competitors. (One post lamented his 12-year-old son's effort to save enough money for a new MacBook.)

When other blogs, such as Engadget and Techdirt, posted rumors that Microsoft was blocking MP3 playback on Verizon phones, Scoble straightened out the situation within hours.With about 2,500 sites linking to his blog, a statement from Scoble gets around the 'Net quickly.

Scoble's credibility is enhanced by his "I'm not hiding anything" attitude. He posts his cell phone number, and he encourages candid comments from readers. One reader had this to say about Scoble's MacBook post, "Does anybody else see the irony in the son of the most well-known Microsoft evangelist being so pro-Apple?"

Scoble's spin? "My son wants the expensive MacBook [because] it'll run both Windows and OSX. Enough said. . . . He's an iPod fan, which got him sold on Apple stuff."

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Plus: Find the information you need in Network World's blogs

 

Mini-Microsoft

This blog, published by an anonymous Microsoft employee, pulls no punches when it comes to criticizing the software behemoth. The tagline says it all: "Let's slim down Microsoft into a lean, mean, efficient customer pleasing profit making machine!" Mini has called Microsoft "bloated, big and slow," and has actively discouraged job seekers from looking for work (or accepting work) at Microsoft, though the blogger does think interns can learn a lot from a good dose of Microsoft culture and then taking their talents elsewhere. Yet the blogger writes, "I love Microsoft ... and I know we have the innate potential to be great again and to backtrack away from this path of mediocrity." The rant-meter often goes off the charts at Mini-Microsoft, but the fly on the wall point of view is irresistibly addictive. (Microsoft-sponsored employee blogs can be found here.)

Related links

Blogs, wikis find a home in the enterprise
02/08/06

Google charts blog analytics path with Measure Map
02/15/06

Lotus touts role of blogs, wikis and feeds
01/30/06

Blogs are so 16th-century

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