The message is dead, long live the messenger

"Repeat after me: 'the message' is dead, gone and not coming back. Blogs are conversations, conversations are social interaction and social interaction is about your relationship to a person, not a statement. Cornelius Puschmann in a comment on Suw Charman's post Edelman: must try harder" (via Adriana). Here's two of my favourite quotes from Charman's post on her disappointment over Edelman's dabbling in fake blogs, or flogs, on behalf of Wal Mart, but do check out the full post:

For a long time I've felt that Richard [Edelman] is indulging in the zooification of bloggers - collecting and displaying them the way that rich people used to do with exotic animals. I worry that this makes him feel that he's got a better understanding of the phenomenon than he actually has.

Kevin [Anderson] frequently talks about how he sees big media trying to adapt blogs to their business model instead of adapting their business to blogs, and Edelman are making exactly the same mistake - trying to use blogs for PR, instead of trying to adapt PR to blogs. Having a blog isn't a magic bullet, it doesn't fix anything. The magic comes from transparency, openness, honesty and engagement. As Kevin says, that's the cluetrain, this is just clue-fucked.