Tyrell parkins

http://www.americanexpresstravellite.com

In Miami on Tuesday I got to meet billionaire Richard Branson and anchorwoman Jane Pauley (he told me he’s never read a blog and she said she’d never met a blogger before — the account of the meeting is over at my site).

And no, we’ve not been given any restrictions about what to say. Anyone who wonders what it is all about, just go over and read about it on any of the three blogs involved.

Best,
Anita

Maybe companies are getting smart about how to control bloggers. We need to not let this happen. or else blogging will become like billboards, everywhere and a pollution to our society.

It has always made me wonder, why don’t we have giant billboards with art instead of adds…. ahh thats right….. because so much of our society is controlled by commercial not cultural interest.

Keep the blogosphere cultural and independent. This is part of the reason I will be starting a new site called Bloghurt (Now with added culture, improve your digestion). The blogosphere is selling out.

I spent an hour explaining the benefits of every associate, from the CEO down to the schlub on the phones, having their own blogs and allowing RSS aggregators that can be placed as add-ons in MS Outlook (like Newsgator). I explained how letting free-form RSS subscriptions throughout the organization would allow an organic social network to grow that could overcome The 150 Rule as described in the book “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell.

I basically handed them the way to maximize the efficiency of their internal and external communications and they sat and looked at me like I had just given a lecture on Chinese brush strokes.

I was basically laughed out of the room, but I know that I was still right and the scrubs who won’t embrace these new tools are going to eventually be phased away like people in the early 90s who refused to make the switch to computers.

Will be watching very closely Dane’s experiences with this and hope all goes well.

Also, I think this represents a big step forward on the ‘blogger as citizen journalist’ path, for those who are into such things. The ‘official press’ has been a part of such invitations virtually since the first press put out the first paper. That such big-name company’s as AMEX are starting to pull bloggers into the mix speaks to the credibility and viability of the platform as well as to the talents of the writers.

Of course, as with all such things, there are always issues of selling out and so on. So it’s definately a ‘blogger beware’ issue – those who are or wish to be involved with such things will, like print journalists, have to learn to differentiate between specious justification and a truly quiet conscience.