In that we are somewhat skilled in the art of attack, we are watching the current blog brouhaha over the Dan Lyons cover story in Forbes about blog lynchings with both amusement and concern. Dan’s piece provides a sobering and unvarnished look at the downside of blogs and should be required reading for every CEO.
Ironically, blog evangelist Steve Rubel is imploring his minions to ignore the Forbes piece and is commencing with his own on-line lynching of Dan Lyons (soon-to-be-maligned). A perfect example of blogs attacking! One wonders if Lyons used Rubel as a willing dupe to prove his thesis.
We have long counseled enterprise CEO’s extreme caution with the blogosphere. Caution in what they post or allow to be posted about their enterprise and how they need to aggressively defend and respond to blog attacks.
Jeremy Pepper has a well-reasoned response here.
3:00pm PDT Update: Nicholas Carr responds to the brouhaha here.
6:30pm PDT Update: This story is gathering major steam. Many similarities between this episode, the recent dust up with Neil
French and the Steve Jobs/Wiley tempest several months back. Pretty
much the same vigilante force at work in each case. The dynamics of these attacks are simple, crude and effective. Traditional PR doctrine is helpless in preventing or responding to these attacks.
Sunday 10:00am PST Update: Dave Taylor of Intuitive Systems and a Business Blog contributor weighs in suggesting the Forbes article raises lots of important questions…
Monday 6:00pm PST Update: Shel Israel has a hysterical post. Now I’m convinced Lyons used both Israel and Rubel as willing dupes to prove his thesis.
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I said something similar at AccMan. My take was that to avoid the negative stuff was a guarantee to be seen as a snale oil salesman. (I didn’t use those words but…) Steve’s post just missed the point completely. How on earth would he like CEOs to engage with the lunatic fringe?
Hi Dennis,
Good to hear from you. Lunatic fringe exactly! But remember Steve Rubel is the guy who framed the issue in terms of “The war is over. The people have defeated the corporation”.
http://twoscenarios.typepad.com/maneuver_marketing_commun/2005/10/our_primary_bus.html
Debbie Weil another member of the blog intelligentsia while not liking the article has an intelligent well-reasoned response here:
http://www.blogwriteforceos.com/blogwrite/2005/10/forbes_bites_ba.html
You know, the thing is you have to judge who you are taking advice from. Anyone that says to ignore any press is a danger to himself, the industry and the client.