What Technorati’s Cool New Ad Means

I was on the cardio machine at the gym, reading Newsweek when I noticed an ad that made me smile. Technorati has been running print ads right next to the blurbs and tidbits section in the back of the magazine. See the graphic at left. I do apologize for the strangeness of the way it looks. I took the pictures with my new camera phone and then pieced it together using PowerPoint (of all things).

This is so cool because it means that blogs are becoming more mainstream. The fact that a blogosphere-oriented search engine is advertising in a magazine so widely by the American public can be used as a metric of the public’s interest in the blogosphere. Technorati and their affiliated business geeks believe that most people are ready to start using blog search engines, so they start advertising to them. This is more reason than ever for businesses to start the process of figuring out what they want to do about the blogosphere. Even more reason to seek out our consulting services.

At the very least, it means that companies must start work on a blogging policy at once. If you own a business, chances are that your employees are blogging. And yes, they’re talking about work. If you don’t tell them what they can and can’t write about - then anything is fair game. And it’s much better to keep critical information from leaking into the blogosphere beforehand than having to fire a valued employee because of something they said after the deed is already done.