Blogs and big corporations

The CES highlight for me so far at CES was sitting down and interviewing Ben and Mena Trott, the first couple of blogging, whose Movable Type and Typepad Web log software are the most powerful platforms in the field. I’ll profile them in the Freep next week.

They’re out here in las Vegas to announce that their Six Apart company (named because their birth dates are six days apart) just bought LiveJournal, one of the Net’s oldest blogging packages.

Anyway, during our chat, they told me that the next big trend they saw coming was for big corporations to get on the blogging wagon, using blogs as a way to generate buzz and put a more friendly face on the shirts and ties and talking heads who run them.

Great timing.

Because I awoke this morning to find a note about General Motors, the world’s largest corporation, pointing me to something called Fastlane, a new GM blog for top management.

Vice Chairman Bob Lutz has the first offering, which talks about the Saturn and GM’s plans for the model.

I gotta wonder, though, did Lutz really write this? Will CEO Rick Waggoner ring his administrative assistant to say “please hold the calls, I have to update my blog”?

If this is just a PR gambit, it’s not going to go anywhere.

Blogging isn’t about corporate identity or spin. It’s about community and relationships and the readers of blogs can spot a poser from a participant faster than even GM’s speediest Corvette can go.

I’m not saying that GM’s Fastlane is such a thing. But we’ll see. For now, let’s give them credit for communicating.