Jason Fried of 37signals recently interviewed me about how Business Logs uses Basecamp, our project collaboration tool of choice. I also discuss how I use it for my multitude of school projects, so I think it’s a good read. Of course, I may also be slightly biased 😉
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Mazda’s Blogging Mishap
Yesterday, Matthew spoke of companies jumping on the blogging trend much like they did with e-commerce shops years ago. In the comments I mentioned that the difference between the two online “eras” is that with blogging you know much more quickly if you are going to be a success or not. By accident I have found the perfect example and it happened this week.
BL Ochman caught an interesting site made by Mazada, a fake blog or pseudo blog if you will. Here are her thoughts:
Mazda blows it big-time with a fake blog HolloweenM3 that includes not one but three Mazda commercials disguised as videos found by a blogger on public access TV. The lastest video, titled Phantasmagoria, shows a bunch of 20-somethings riding around listening to heavy metal music in a Mazda with some ghouls.
It would be funny if it was run as a TV ad. It’s just stupid in a fake blog.
And you can bet it cost Mazda a gazillion dollars.
Other people in the industry caught wind of the blog as well and felt the same sentiments as Ochman. Funny I thought because if these people didn’t think the blog was going to be successful then there is a good chance that it wouldn’t be successful at all.
I wanted to provide a Business Logs analysis of the site and went to go visit it today, but it was gone. Gone as in it doesn’t exist anymore. There are no previous pages showing. Nothing. I couldn’t even find a Google cache of the site. This is probably the quickest I have seen the blogosphere impact a corporate blog ever. Hopefully Mazda has learned its lesson and will not make the same mistake again.
Corporations who view blogs as marketing gimmicks will quickly find that they are wasting both their time and money with them because the blogosphere does not tolerate this kind of behavior. The market has spoken and Mazda has done nothing but lower its reputation and waste money by trying to exploit a medium that they don’t understand. Bravo.
The Car Blog
Does running your own company mean that you have to solely focus on projects with clients? Of course it doesn’t. Today we launch The Car Blog (TCB) to the world and saying we are excited is a major, major understatement.
Mike loves cars. Matthew loves motorcycles. I just love to work on new projects. So as you can see The Car Blog was a perfect extension of all our interests. We have gathered some of the greatest minds in the design world who also share a passion for automobiles. Some of these names you might have heard of: Jason Fried, Carlos Segura, and Didier Hilhorst. Along with them we have gathered other car afficinados to bring you a car site the world (or at least us) has been waiting for.
Why?
There are thousands of car site out there. Even the blog kings themselves, Nick Denton and Jason Calacanis, have them, so what would make us think we would be any different. Well despite the name this isn’t your typical blog. TCB is more of a car magazine online with blog features integrated. Our focus is bringing quality and fun back to the car scene along with a design that shows respect towards the cars we write about.
Too many car sites are ugly. Too many of them are boring. Too many of them…well too many of them are not what we wanted them to be. In the Open Source world if you have an itch, you scratch it by writing a program. This is the same type of thinking we apply to websites and is a reason you will see more from us in the future.
The Design
If you are wondering about the design of the site our Creative Director, Mike Rundle, has put together an excellent writeup describing his thought process while working on the design.
Our Talents and Services
TCB shows you what our team is capable of. Because our specialization rests in working with blogs that does not mean we can not create full scale websites for your company. We are using TCB as an introduction to our design services that we are also offering. More of these services will be discussed later, but for now head on over to The Car Blog and enjoy yourself. We know we will.
CEO Blog or Journal?
Richard Edelman is blogging. Or should we say, “business logging” 🙂 He is the CEO of the Edelman PR agency, and is attempting to bring a voice and vision to his company with a weblog. But does he succeed?
I write this on the plane en route to India, which I will report on later in the week. Today’s subject is not a happy one. My friend and former colleague, Gus Weill Jr., age 42, took his life three weeks ago in New York City.
Jeremy Zawondy on His New Position
Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo fame has received a new position at Yahoo where people are claiming that he has become Yahoo’s Robert Scoble. Jeremy explains that his role is “not quite the same, but similar in some ways.”
We think it’s a great idea for every company to have a blog. We believe that it is even better if every company can find an employee from within that can give an honest perspective of the company. What makes Scoble (and now Zawodny) so powerful is that they don’t always agree with what their company is doing.
This helps shed some light on the company for the readers of the blog and ups the honesty factor. If you can write about your company, without fear of getting fired, and effectively write both the postive and negatives that you perceive, then the company will benefit internally and in the eyes of its customers.