Just for clarity, I take the post by Robin Hamman that you link to about using “blogs as a publishing platform, rather than as a way of engaging with audiences” as describing the Beeb’s blogs as a whole – radio DJs; programmes; genres etc – rather than specifically about management/editor blogs. That’s not to say that a more specific criticism might not be valid, but I do think Robin’s post makes a more general point.

See you on the other side of the “Genre Annexes” PDF.

This is exactly what Clay Shirky was on about when he said “media targeted at you but that does not include you” is history.

Thanks for pulling out these quotes. I was pleased to read them! Discalaimer: I’m responsible for the BBC’s blogging platform.

Yep.. These trends are holding up into 2008, with unique users per week for all blogs being over 1m in recent weeks and comments c25K a month. (far more comments are stil left at our traditional boards and the have your say forums though.).

I agree that we shouldn’t overstate their success though and its still true that its a real learning curve across our several editors and management blogs for the editors to respond and engage with the feedback received. This has been hard.

We’ve found that this is possible (and i’m talking about the BBC mgt internet blog here but i’d say it applies to other similar propositions) but only when we’ve had two factors in place;

a) Strong ownership (buy in from senior management even when criticism from users is a “shitstorm” as Ashley Highfield dubbed the initial BBC iPlayer/mac period the other day) and

b) Investment in community facilitation, monitoring and hosting. Monitoring feedback and having the attennae to alert issues to teams ( and thus the knowledge of the tools that makes this now a lot easier) is often overlooked. Doing this well can’t be done by magic.

Its also still true that the initial response to the existence of a blogging platform by some of our teams is to want to use it as a straightforward publishing platform. That still happens although as social media conventions become normalised, there is now more of a consensus across the BBC about what constitutes good and bad practice.