No Comment

We’re not too surprised that we don’t have many comments on this blog yet—the blog is still fairly new, and we’re still getting the hang of integrating it into our weekly routine. What surprises us is that some of our favorite blogs on marketing and PR (see our Blogroll)—even the blogs most respected within the industry—don’t have many comments, either.

However, our favorite political sites, not to mention the blogs we visit to gawk at celebrities on a daily basis, often have tons of comments on each post. Granted, DC and Hollywood usually offer more drama and glamour than Madison Avenue or Silicon Valley. But is that the real reason why most marketing blogs haven’t created a visibly vibrant community within the MarCom world?

My first thought is that comparing Steve Rubel to Go Fug Yourself is a bit like comparing LinkedIn to MySpace: as useful as LinkedIn may be, it’s nowhere near as fun as watching Gen-Y exhibitionists disgrace themselves on garishly designed personal profiles.  LinkedIn serves a practical purpose—networking, jobhunting—whereas MySpace mostly satisfies social curiosity or even prurience. (I’d say that Facebook is somewhere between the two: a network of bona fide friends and acquaintances—complete with first and last names—interacting in a mostly non-professional way.)

So in our marketing blogs, are we simply creating work-appropriate versions of more casual (and more communal) online interactions? Is that why the comments sections are often empty—because marketing blogs are the business-casual version of our best online behavior, and we save most of our brutal honesty and spirited discussion for when we’re at home, reading Wonkette in our pajamas? And if so, is that sort of like behaving ourselves at the company holiday party, then going out afterward to get smashed with friends? (We’re, um, being totally hypothetical here, of course.)

Or to put it another way: is the MarCom blogosphere hamstrung by its commitment to decorum, or is decorum what differentiates the MarCom blogosphere in particular and the corporate blogosphere in general? If so, could we maybe institute a kind of no-holds-barred Casual Friday, where we make snarky remarks about everybody’s blogs? Or would that eliminate some necessary veneer of professionalism that we sustain to distinguish our professional writing from the stuff we might read and write just for kicks?