I think bloggers are more than willing to be open to companies, the problem being that companies aren’t used to getting critical feedback. They’re used to being the ones who “know” stuff, instead of admitting for once that we, the consumers are ahead of the curve. Until they overcome that issue, I feel they will be dealing with a little bit more hostility, especially when they continue to engage in social media with either ignorance, arrogance or both.

Thanks for the great comment =)

And I didn’t mean to actively go market to companies. As you said, the conversations will go on, with or without corporate involvement. If companies want to survive or even thrive in this new landscape, it’s up to them to figure out if they want in or out.

When I said “invite them”, I didn’t mean literally spending effort to coddle them and ask them to join (I too have better things to do with my 2 hours). Like I said, I’m not too familiar with the Singapore blogosphere/social media scene. My first impression was we’re just a tad stand-offish (I’m probably wrong). Given the size of our population, there’s probably not enough long tail effect to spread that. Defending our rights to be us is fine. If it’s to the point of bordering on hostility (which was what I felt), then that’s bad. There are better things to have strong opinions about…

About the only local bloggers I know are Mr Brown, Xia Xue, miyagi (?). Their topics, tone, style of writing forms my impression of the local scene. Perhaps companies see the local scene similarly myopically as I do.

Couple that with the general conservative nature of local companies, and I believe that is the reason for their hesitation. Which might ultimately become their downfall if they don’t pick up soon.

Economics and capitalism taking over, some other competitor (maybe even a smaller company) is going to come in and dominate that market. And _we_ will benefit! Muahahaha…

I’ll add in two, maybe three more categories for the bloggers: fashion, food and photography. But I’m willing to bet if companies search hard enough, there will be those for music, books, maybe aeroplane models and more obscure stuff. That’s the beauty of the long tail of the web.

Your mention of the purple cow is a very interesting one. If I’m hearing you correctly, you’re saying for bloggers to stand out from the millions out there to be noticed, we should be purple cows? I find it interesting because we’re always thinking of the companies to be the purple cows, not necessarily the consumer (and bloggers are consumers), but it’s a good point.

I’m not sure I’m in entire agreement with you about inviting the corporations and us championing the use of social media in a corporate setting. The truth is, and maybe people will agree, that the openness, conversations and relationships are going to go on with or without their involvement. If they don’t want to get their feet wet, why should I care?

Or to put it in a very cynical way, why should *I* the consumer, do anything to help the business? What’s in it for me? Especially when I can easily turn to the competitor? I mean the reality is that even people like us (I mean the SMB team) have “day jobs” or at least “day lives” and our free time is spent on our own side projects and passions like SMB. I’m not going to spend 2hours a week going to random company X and telling them why they should be involved. (If they ask, however, that’s another question.)

Finally, is there really any difference? Two years ago would we have heard about them? Would most of North American have heard about them? The difference is they have embrace the new world of social media and the digital world, to become those people. And that’s what I’m saying to our practitioners and our companies: It’s about time you embrace it and BE that person and a leader.

The technological bloggers write about gadgets, software and the latest tech news. I’m not going into the political bloggers. Then there are the bloggers writing in the original web log format, the personal diary. Given that most bloggers combine those topics together, their blogs effectively become just personal blogs.

It’s about perception. I believe the companies can’t easily tell one blogger (or social media practitioner) from another. So they use the only metric they know: influence.

To them, we’re just a big herd of cattle, indistinguishable from each other. So they just look for the cow with the most number of cows following. As Seth Godin puts it, we need to be remarkable; we need to be Purple Cows.

From some of the comments I’ve read about SMB4, and in defense of the corporations, I feel we need to stop being so self-righteous about the whole thing. I hear you about the engaging-blogger part. I was recently approached via email by (it appears) a German company. I stopped reading after “Dear webmaster”, even though my name’s plastered all over my blog.

We want the corporates to join in (right?). They’re thinking of return on investment. We’re thinking of openness, relationships and engagement. Here’s the thing: we’re the open ones. Let’s invite them as far as they’re willing to go (the conservative nature of Asian (companies) doesn’t help), and we meet them halfway. Let’s market to them how social media is worth their while, how blogs are worth investing, how _we_ are worth communicating with.

About your point on the social media adoption of other countries, I say we’re not up to that standard yet. We need to step up _our_ standard. The people you’ve mentioned are all respected professionals in some form. Companies respect professionalism. Perhaps we need to write better, conduct ourselves better (and respond to insensitive, in-your-face sales pitches better).

I can identify with some of your angst. This is a great article.