Clogs

There was a great article in the WSJ a few weeks back out blogging and fashion.

Apparently, blogging has even been adopted by Neiman Marcus at Bryant Park and Parisian fashion shows (and other events) to blog about "new trends". These live blogs are followed up with additional entries about what Neiman Marcus currently is offering (or will offer) that matches the new trends.

These blogs are subjective - but their opinion always runs on a positive note about Neiman Marcus, the store's collection and reviews of the fashion shows. Nary a negative word. Neiman Marcus does this because they always see a bump in sales for the labels that get covered and the products that are highlighted.

The article had called these corporate sorts of blogging efforts Clogs. I have no idea if this has entered the lexicon yet or if it was a pun by the author (since he was talking about fashion).

Blogs apparently are useful at work. At my work, the computer geeks set up a really efficient one to keep track of our projects and as a eternal record of what happened. What is nice about this is that everyone can communicate on the blog (they are called boards at work) and files can be stuck there and so on. Its a great way to avoid the endless rounds of e-mails that people, who are avoiding work, do. The blog/message board tends to keep communication directed and succinct.

Organizational blogs also can have their utility. It can be a topic arranged message board that could be original content and submissions by members to keep people up to date on what is going on. Kind of like a calendar with a shitload of notes.

From Mike Petrelis regarding the HRC's advertisement (or lack thereof) of the SotM event:

The event took place at the offices of the Human Rights Campaign and the group's executive director, Joe Solmonese, was on the panel, but you'd never know any of this if you depended upon the HRC web site for info on it. Cruise on over to HRC's site and you won't find anything on the panel, the fact it was held at their HQ, and that it attracted a good turnout.

If anyone ought to have a highly visible and useful blog, it ought to be HRC. This sort of a forum (obviously this blog would be filtered and more instructional than personal) to address topical matters of the day/week/whatever.

Tiny Queer Footballs was addressing the HRC, in particular, about coordinating the movement at many levels to effect change. One point that he made that would be easily handled by a blog would be:

[...]but we need well-developed talking points for each and every unhinged e-blast attack that we know is coming. the religious right knows how to use the Internet to smear and spread fear and using the Internet is essential for a counterattack.

Note that as stories have their arc, which can takes months to play out, the story morphs as the media tends to push some aspects unevenly to sell papers. Due to the nature of the arc, it can get sometimes confusing to pinpoint what the original conflict, or discussion, or event was that started the whole thing. Blogs are a searchable record, organized by date (or topic) that the gay movement can use to manage Tiny Queer Footballs reasonable request. Additionally, e-mails can be shared and talking points easily downloaded for individual users to adopt in their own lives.

I think that blogs are essentially a platform. And they can be customized in many different, and diverse, ways by differing sorts of organizations. While I conceptually think of blogs as an upgraded list serve (Jimbo brought that point up a couple weeks ago), they appear to have been adopted most successfully by individuals as a means of peronsal expression in the virtual world. But I think that as the large monolithic organizations start to think about how they should present themselves digitally, or virtually, they will find that static HTML pages might be less effective than a curated blog or blogs reflecting the dynamic behavior of the organization.

Blogs are like a knife, they can be used for good (cooking, cutting), bad (killing, cutting), or novel ways not originally intended (i'm stirring my coffee with one right now). I'm curious to see whether the larger gay organizations will adopt blogs as just another form of communication in the virtual world.