Context

Humo liegt! character blog

Current Humo's anti-campaign is probably the first use of a character blog or adverblog in Belgium. Credit goes to De Mortierbrigrade, an agency run by the son of Humo's ex-Chief Editor.

The campaign tries to promote the results of a survey among youngsters that will be published in the offline magazine. A so-called fed-up market research character has opened a weblog holding a few movie clips. These clips clearly prove that the current average youngster is no good at all - exactly the opposite of the outcome of the survey. That's why the weblog is called : Humo lies! (in Dutch only!, like the magazine).

Regularly, new entries with clips are added to the weblog (like on a real blog). The visitor has the possibility to leave his own thoughts and remarks (like on a real blog). But s/he can't react upon individual posts : s/he can drop a comment on a forum that looks like a comment screen of a real blog.

The blog also holds a funny chain letter video in an attempt to increase viral spread. The clips also feature on TV. The latter still helps to increase the numbers ...

The proof of the pudding ...

My first post
After having visited the Blognomics conference (http://www.blognomics.nl) and having read this interesting article "Blogs will change your business" in BusinessWeek online, I'm finally taking my first steps in the blogosphere. Not even sure what I will be blogging about ...

Why?

I'm whitnessing more or less the same phenomenon as 10 years ago. The internet was on the rise, mostly in the U.S.  You had believers and non-believers, people who loved it and people who hated it, people who said it will not last, others who said that it was going to change our lives forever, people who understood, who did not ... and most of all : the mass media and the business world had no clue how to react.   

Wanted: blogging experts
In 1995, a few - mostly young people - who saw 'it' coming, jumped on the band-wagon and started their careers as experts in the field of internet marketing and business.  Exactly, that 's happening again in the States, example : Google 'guy' gets fired for blogging "unfortunate" comments on the company's hr-policy and then gets hired as an expert to roll out a blogging strategy and policy for another company, called Plaxo. Check his company blog at http://blog.plaxoed.com. 

Also locally it's happening. Example : he started his career at Skynet as a programmer, worked on their blogs and got caught by the phenomenon. He's now working for one of the largest blogging service and software providers in the world. Check out his personal blog at http://maarten.typepad.com/blogologie/.

I've also met a few Dutch people at Blognomics.nl who are thinking of starting their own blogging entrepreneur-ship. Believe me, these ships will sail ...

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
If you want my opinion (which is the main intention of a blog ;-) :  it will become THE internet consultancy business in 2006 - advising companies how to respond to blogs and how to make money with blogs. 

That's why I've started my own blog ... still not sure what I will be blogging about. But very sure that I need to share my opinion with the world, because the proof of the pudding is in the eating.