OPEN

When you’re passionate about something new, and you want to make use of it in business, you need to keep striving for perspective. It’s too easy to be seduced by how exciting it is. Pan out, get some counterpoint, be your own fiercest critic etc.

There’s plenty of voices out there in the online community who are prepared to speak against the idea that blogs will seamlessly enter the mainstream, displace traditional media or that engaging with social media is even appropriate for a traditional corporate communications approach.

• Here’s a Slashdot piece (via the excellent and unstintingly challenging Blog Herald) on an report on RSS from Yahoo (download it here) – have a look at the comments from geeks/early adopters basically putting down RSS and blogs – or at least trying to cut the hype down to size.

• And here are two links to pieces by Hugh MacLeod on gapingvoid.com questioning whether blogs are appropriate at all for large corporations.

Both of these are excellent food for thought. In fact, Mr MacLeod’s most recent post stopped me in my tracks: I’ve put on ice a whole piece I was writing about potential pitfalls corporate blogs while I think through what he was saying.