apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Seems to be a trend; frog desig nis doing this, too:

www.frogdesign.com/frogblog

Steelcase has an interesting blog:

http://blog.steelcase.com

This may or may not be a good idea.
On the one hand, DesignNotes has churned out some fascinating mailings in the past. (In fact, it is one of the few e-mail lists I'm glad I'm on.) I would hope they would articulate a line against promoting their own stuff, but, that seems entirely against the point of being hosted on DWR servers.

Either way, I'll be adding this one to my bookmarks.

I hate to be negative, but I hate DWR. I wish they would just go away. I hate them.

I like corporate blogging myself. It's a nice way to strip past the formalities and figure out what the folks up top are thinking. My own company has a blog: http://www.jivesoftware.com/blog/
Now, this is a company that creates online community tools, so they're ahead of the curve, but it's nice to see some candor from otherwise faceless corporations.

I like when people preface the most negative comments with "I hate to be negative, but..." If you're so good at being negative why hate it so? Embrace the hate and let yourself free.

kidding.

Corporate blogging is the new marketing trend, the idea being (a) blogs are hot and (b) it puts a human face on the impersonal corporation.

There have been blow-ups over companies producing blogs that "belong" to fictional mascots -- basically, as if Betty Crocker had a blog. On the flip side, you sometimes get a blog from a real decision-maker who has something to say, and those can be fun and informative.

Corporate blogs aren't all that new, even in the non-design world... Monster.com has one.

And even the shelter mags are pairing up with bloggers, or getting their writers to create them. House & Garden has a whole slew of bloggers, including pairing up with Grace Bonney, aka DesignSponge, and treehugger.

Dennis, "candor"? Do you really think a corporate blog site is going to express anything that deviates from the company-authorized message?

Well, I love being negative, and I think corporate blogs are a big marketing scam. "Candor"? How dumb do you think we are? The conflict of interest makes candor impossible.