Lexis-Nexis Survey Shows News Still Comes from the MSM

I hope Lexis-Nexis didn't spent too much money on
this survey which revealed that people don't turn to blogs to find out about breaking news.

I'm not sure why that question is even being asked. Is L-N feeling that threatened by new media? Do people really believe that bloggers are going to replace journalists? With few exceptions, bloggers aren't going out there interviewing sources, working beats, going to press conferences, running to crime scenes and working a Rolodex(TM) (did I just date myself?). Bloggers are performing analysis of the work that journalists do.

They say that journalists write the first draft of history. Bloggers, it seems, are now writing the second.

ROI of Blogging from Forrester

Charlene Li, an analyst at Forrester, presented a Webinar today on the ROI of Blogging. Some of it was basic, at least for those who are at all familiar with corporate blogging, but she is an excellent presenter and made some good points:

-- Successful blog management requires measurement.
-- Recruitment blogs can be a very obvious place for companies to start blogging because hiring is all about reaching out to people -- and that's what blogs are all about.
-- Be honest with yourself about the potential risks your new corporate blog could have and put a risk management plan in place ahead of time.
-- When calculating ROI, remember that blogs have all different purposes (customer service, recruitment, loyalty marketing, product marketing, branding, sales gen, community relations, investor relations, etc.) so you have to start by outlineing your goals before you can measure success.

One note: The Webinar was hosted by Cymfony, a message measurement company which recently received top grades from Forrester's Brand Monitoring Wave report. I'm not saying there is any quid pro quo here, but it seems Forrester is just asking for raised eyebrows when it puts its name next to a company that was a focus of one of its reports. Full disclosure: Factiva Insight was also rated in the same report (and scored less well than Cymfony).

Netflix offers $1 million for a better review | CNET News.com

Pretty interesting look into how
Netflix is looking to improve its results.

Exploding Batteries Hit Different Companies at Different Times

This analysis from Factiva Insight shows how discussion of the issue of the exploding laptop batteries hit different companies (Dell, Apple and Lenovo) at different times