Well, Dell has started one2one, a corporate blog, and response from the blogosphere has gone along predictable lines. Jarvis trashed it, Scoble told them how to improve it, Holtz was a voice of moderation and Nick Carr made his usual large sucking sounds in the presence of a corporate consulting prospect.
Personally, I think its a very good thing that Dell is blogging. The fact that so far, it is pretty sucky, is almost irrelevant. And it isn't that we need another corporate blog, which is not true of the bar is set for mediocrity.
It's that Dell has taken a significant baby step in the direction of listening and respond.
Dell's problems are not that Jarvis and the rest of us have posted unkindly about them. It's that, in order to win a price war, they sacrificed product reliability, then disassembled a once adequate support system to the point of shoddiness.
The anger so many of us felt toward Dell, was not the disintegration of the products we had purchased, it was that the company wasn't listening, was dismissing legitimate complaints and otherwise displaying a disdain for the problems of their customers.
I am not so concerned with what the authors of one2one have to say. That will inevitably get better over time. I am more interested in what they hear and acknowledge. People stop shouting when they think someone is listening.
Dell, I'm unlikely to ever go back to you. I left you after being a customer for 15 years. I found Lenovo where service and support continue to be superb. But I'm happy to see you at least try to listen and my advice is--really listen to what people are saying.
Then do something about it.
Welcome to the blogosphere. Seriously.
