AM Blogs and wikis - wow!

 1. First of all, I want to emphasize how interesting it was for me to learn that companies actually use blogging as a tool in a way or another. When thinking about blogging, most of the people start thinking about private persons blogging or celebrities etc. 

My focus was on two blogs: the blogs of Starbucks and IBM. The latter one (IBM) is the one which i consider to be the bad example of company blogging. There are too many people (IBMers = people who use IBM using their own name) posting in their own individual blogs which are all combined in one base. But the idea is still confusing in a way: the company itself remains in a shadow since they highlighted that thoughts presented in blogs are not necessarily representing IBM's views. But in positive the personal thoughts of each blogger becomes clear for readers = the people who are interested in same things (after every blog there is a list about things what the blogger is posting about, so that you can choose if you want to read it or not). However, when checking few blogs, it shows that there are many bloggers who do their posts very occasionally (even every 6 months) and the posts are quite short, so the quality is lacking. 

On the other hand, Starbucks shows us the good kind of company blogging. They (Starbucks) focus on innovations giving a base where average people can share their ideas or view other peoples ideas. It is also possible to see how the ideas presented are actually been used and became reality in the "ideas in action" -section. In this way, Starbucks is using blogging as a tool for new product development and engagement. In the same time, they are receiving feedback and highlighting Starbucks' products. The blog is for especially customers (who can use a username when commenting) and there are two employees (with their first names, introduced) who are answering questions and giving feedback.

2. I chose to get familiar with the blog of Anna Vanhanen - Mungolife. It is a number one blog in the list of top blogs by iltasanomat. The blog is the sixth most read blog and it has over 4 000 subscribers and about 6 400 readers per week. I believe her blog is successful because of the fact that every girl and women can find something interested in it: there sections about fashion, food, travel, beauty.. It is clear that there are product placements and also a lot of ads in the blog. So I would guess that she is making something out of it! She is actually coming with the idea to create a website where se could rent her clothes and expand it so other bloggers could do that there too.. So she has the ambition to doing business in this way at least! I did comment on her latest post but it's "awaiting approval". I'm not sure what that means.. And i actually tried to send her email and ask some further questions about her blogging, but her email mentioned in the blog seems to be the wrong one since the email can't be send.. :( My thought on her blogging though, based on her posts, is that she started blogging because of the fact that she's really ambitious about fashion and is a good writer so maybe she just wanted to share this as a hobby with other same kind of people. 

3. I decided to comment on gefilus-article in wikipedia. I think wikipedia is a great in a sense of democracy and freedom of speech but as a base for information it usually lacks, of course depending on the case. When checking the gefilus-article there seems to be quite reliable information due to the source mentioned in the end. Actually by that you can see if you can trust that the article or not. However, it is difficult for me to say how strong the fact is since I'm not a specialist in that field. If you want to be pessimist enough you can also question if Valio is putting some info there for its own benefit because Valio was introduced quite strongly. 

- Azma :)