"People Ready"

"People Ready" means to me that bloggers with Google-juice might have a small opportunity to deflect a "markets are conversations" hype. So if you ever wondered, prompted by Microsoft "When Did You Know Your Business Was People Ready?", the answer is that you were probably being manipulated by a "spokesblogger". If I thought it would have done any good, I'd have earlier echoed Dave Rogers' post on Vendor Relationship Management:

Doc wondered if I might be willing to help or contribute somehow to the conversation about vendor relationship management. I told him I was skeptical. I think anything that facilitates commercial interactions, does so at the expense of social ones. It's not that I regard all companies as "evil," though most of them are far from "virtuous." As I explained to him, even if all companies were "good," they still must compete with one another for our time and attention. And the universe of competing commercial entities seems to grow without limit; and they are all learning organisms, so they adapt to changes in their environment, and exploit anything that can give them a commercial advantage.

In classical abuse of the terms Conversation, Community, and Credibility (Ethan Johnson:)

Unfortunately, what is hailed as "conversation" really boils down to "chum".
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I think some of what passes for credibility online ties in with the old wheeze about prostitutes, buildings, and politicians becoming more respectable with age.

Bonus Link: Kent Newsome - Arm Farting in the Blogosphere

Scoble could write a post about arm farting and 30 or 40 people would immediately link to it, hoping he might link back.
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In other words, all those people linking wildly to Scoble aren't doing so because they think he is the world's greatest authority on arm farting. They are simply holding out their hands eagerly and hoping Scoble will shake it (via a link) as he walks by.

Disclaimer: This post is (obviously!) not sponsored by Microsoft, or anyone else. Nobody gave me anything of value for it. In fact, it's dubious if this is anything other than a waste of time (as opposed to a source of income ...).

Seth Finkelstein's Infothought blog (Wikipedia, Google, censorware, and an inside view of net-politics) - Syndicate site (subscribe, RSS)