Blogging all over the world

[T_i_B]

Interesting article that seems to have been written in order to advertise a survey on http://www.historymatters.org.uk/output/page96.asp .

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2006/10/17/bablog17.xml

Once more famous for people wanting to talk about their sex lives, their views on politics or, perhaps, just what they had for dinner, blogs are now frequently seizing the news agenda.

Egalitarian by nature and intention as they are, often it is the humblest of blogs that win the most acclaim. The police blog of "PC David Copperfield" is an anonymously written internet diary detailing the life of a real officer based in a rundown but unidentified neighbourhood somewhere north of Birmingham.

It began in April 2004 with the entry "I hope to give you an idea of the depths of sheer incompetence the British police can plumb", and PC Copperfield has not let his audience down. The site has since attracted 500,000 readers and the diary has been made into a book.

The internet musings of Charles Dunstone, the chief executive of Carphone Warehouse, are also candid. Departing from the "never explain, never apologise" strategy of some corporate public-relations specialists, Mr Dunstone devotes his blog to a litany of entertaining excuses for why his Talk Talk broadband scheme is such a customer-services disaster, not to mention occasionally loosing off a potshot at a rival.

More and more companies are entering the blogosphere, although industry insiders say the evidence suggests firms have found they do more harm than good. Usually it is a question of dealing with angry blogging customers on their own ground. The American computer company Dell started a blog largely because it was under attack from a popular blogger called Jeff Jarvis.