Dell computers has joined the blogosphere. This has, of course, started quite the little conversation around the sphere. Steve Rubel seems to have noticed it first, and Jeff Jarvis seems to have picked up his “Dell’s customer support sucks” mantra again.
Shel and Robert seem to take a little less critical role and actually try and lead the Dell team in the right direction. I couldn’t agree more.
The thing that most of us forget is that unlike Dave Winer, we didn’t invent the internet. All of us started somewhere, and most of us have very little experience with this medium, New Media. Including today, the Dell blog has been around for 2 business days(with 5 days of posts). Very few of us actually knew what we were doing after just 2 days.
Steve points out that they have no conversation. That they haven’t opened up to “engaging the community.” Jeff goes even further and claims that because there were no outbound links in the first four days, that the blog is already a failure. Or, rather, that it’s “as much conversation as yelling at a brick wall.”
Scoble, gave them the same advice that he gave Quixtar. Link to your enemies. Well, Dell responded to that and the rest with a post from their Digital Media Manager with links to Jeff, Steve, Shel, and Robert.  All at once. 4 links and counting is how they end the post. Suppose that’s a direct stab at Jeff? I do.
Like Shel, I believe that as time goes and the blog becomes more known, the conversation will expand. Dell really does mean well, and as long as they keep it as open as possible and participate, they should do just fine. Perhaps they should pick up “Naked Conversations” for hints and tips?
They really haven’t had that bad of a start so far either. There are several video posts(ala Channel9) that are actually kinda fun to watch. I like having the little extra insight into the inner workings of a industry behemoth like Dell. That’s why Channel9 is so popular. Hell, that’s why celebrity news is so popular. We all like looking in on something we don’t have.
Technorati Tags: dell, dell blog, dell one2one, one2one, shel holtz, jeff jarvis, steve rubel, robert scoble, channel9
About Shane Ede
Good article ede!