Yahoo! launched a blog yesterday. The first post is an intro by Jeff Weiner, SVP Yahoo! Search & Marketplace, so it’s kicked off with a solid business/customer focus. And, the blog starts out with commenting and trackbacks enabled.
On his personal blog, Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo! (Finance) has an FAQ about the new corporate blog. Pretty clear answers to two of the FAQ:
Q: Is this just going to turn into a lame PR blog?
A: I don’t expect that to happen. PR does not own the blog. And it’d be a wasted opportunity if it was just another PR outlet.
Q: So PR’s not involved?
A: Of course they are. Someone has to keep an eye on the wannabe bloggers. They’re not going to be re-writing all the posts, if that’s what you’re worried about. They know that blogs are not press releases, and hopefully this will help them better understand this brave new world.
A very refreshing and open beginning!
Now let’s see Google improve the effort in their by-comparison lame blog (last post was 4 August). Billed as “Insight into the news, technology, and culture of Google,” I don’t see this blog helping develop closer relationships with customers. For starters, you can’t comment. (But maybe there’s work going on behind the scenes that can’t see the light of day yet until the IPOs is done.)
Next up – Microsoft with a corporate blog, at least focused on search technologies?