Blogging, A new l@@k

After reading the excerpt from Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Isreal , and about Firefox, as well as Newsweek article on the subject, I now became aware of the powerfulness of blogs. If blogs can be used correctly, they can be a unbelievable marketing tool. If you think about marketing pushes that business do they often come off as annoying. Think about emails you receive, newsletters, ads, etc. Then think about stumbling across a blog that an average/random person wrote. This takes away the bias you receive from the business themselves or whomever is trying to market the product or service. A good real life example of this is that your more likely to go to a restaurant from a friends recommendation than an ad you see in the newspaper. After reading how Firefox became famous solely through blogs, I was interested in the credibility of blogs and came across this article:
How Blogs are Changing Business Journalism for the Better.

At first, one wouldn't think of blogs as a reliable/objective source of information. However, some bloggers are more trusted than reviews/articles written by news agencies. Why is this? I believe it is because bloggers can be in fact, more under the microscope than journalists are. Blogs are an open forum, and anyone in the world can comment about the validity/content of what has been written. In the article above, there is a good example of this concept. Many people trust one man, Hank Greenberg than MarketWatch. What does all this mean? I believe blogs will continue to gain popularity, and that business will have to pay more attention to what people are saying in blogs as they become more and more powerful.