Companies Recognize (Gasp) Their Customers Can Use The Web

from the absolute-shocker dept

It's hard to know who's actually the late one in this story: is it the companies profiled or the NY Times in reporting that companies are noticing that their customers use web forums to give feedback about various actions by the companies? If anything, the most amusing part of this article is the sort of knock at blogs, as it seems the press has been so focused on the "blog revolution" that they missed out on the fact that fans/haters of various companies have camped out on message forums for years and years. In fact, with our corporate work, we've often found that you get much better info about what's going on in a certain space by watching the various forums more than watching various blogs or trade publications. They all serve different purposes, but the real fanatic types (who often have the most insight) hang out on message forums. Any company that's not watching all of those things is probably missing a lot about what's happening in their own market -- or even with their own business.