Fortune: Why There's No Escaping the Blog

Despite the fact that most companies are simply ignoring blogs, David Kirkpatick and Daniel Roth write in Fortune, "The blog - short for weblog—can indeed be ... a company's worst PR nightmare, its best chance to talk with new and old customers, an ideal way to send out information, and the hardest way to control it.

Unlike earlier promises of self-publishing revolutions, the blog movement seems to be the real thing," they write. The permalink, the blog innovation that generates a unique URL for every blog post, helps fuel the viral spread of blog posts, and helps posts "gain broad attention amazingly fast—and reputations can get taken down just as quickly."

Says [Six Apart] CEO Barak Berkowitz: "When everybody has a tool for talking to the rest of the world, you can't hide from your mistakes. You have to face them. Once you commit to an open dialogue, you can't stop. And it's painful."

"As the impact of blogs spreads through global business, that pain—and promise—will be something companies will have to deal with. And if they don't? You're bound to read about it in a blog."

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