All rights reserved 2005 Olivier Blanchard

Here's what I love about blogs: They foster discussion. They promote dialogue. They bring ideas together in one place. Natural evolution for the web? You bet.

Natural evolution of word-of-mouth? Yep.

Case in point: Brains On Fire - The blog. I just discovered it a few weeks ago.

Brains On Fire is a cool little Identity Company based out of Greenville, SC. Something you should know about the Brains On Fire crew is that they stay busy. Very busy. But they still make the time to publish a very tight and sometimes inspiring blog. Nothing fancy, mind you. No photos, no illustrations, no 15-page manifestos - like some people (ahem). But I like it because they make simplicity work.

The format kind of works for me, and though I enjoy the occasional long-winded piece, short little bits are very practical.

Unlike this blog, you can be in and out of their latest post inside of two minutes. But that's where they getcha: Just because you spent almost no time at all reading their brilliant little comments doesn't mean you're done. Nope. Chances are, you're going to spend all day thinking about that wicked little piece of prose they laid out of for you.

That little slice of pie they left out on the table.

That delicious little crumb.

That irresistible little lure.

It's going to do its thing somewhere inside your brain and pop out a few hours later with ten new ideas in hand.

No, it isn't viral in the marketing sense of the term, but it is definitely so in its effect.

So back to the point: Blogs foster discussion. Dialogue. The sharing of ideas.

A few days ago, Robbin Phillips posted a little thing about trying to rename RSS feeds. How could we make RSS more mainstream? How could we make the concept a household name? Something that everyone over the age of fifty who knows how to use a mouse would know about and kind of understand?

Think cookies. Think ladybugs. Think worker bees. Think pickles.

And guess what: Comments on posts like these, posts that foster discussion, posts that ask a question, posts that force us to actually type stuff on that thing called a... keyboard are triple what the more straightforward blog entries typically log.

Discussion drives blogs.

Dialogue.

The sharing of ideas.

That's what blogs are about. Check out the (ever-growing) selection of fine marketing blogs in the margin, and have fun.

By the way, we did come up with a new name for RSS. It's a good one too.