Ex Libris blogs, oh my!

Via a Twitter friend, I learned today that Ex Libris has started two blogs. In a demonstration of how beholden many still are to an earlier world, they issued a press release to announce a blog. Hmm.

On the one hand, this is good, but experience should tell us that those who use a press release to announce a blog tend to use the blog as a mouthpiece for the organization. In other words, we should all go there and read their press releases.  Checked out the blogs, and found what I expected to some degree. One of the blogs has little content (Initiatives), and some large gaps between posts. The other blog (Commentary from Carl Grant, president of EL North America) suffers from a malady one wishes would go away, that of the overly long post. My heavens, cut them into pieces, please. It is perhaps not surprising that he has no comments, since it would mean that someone made it through the whole post.

When companies jump in like this, it can be a good and bad thing. On the positive side, they are trying to be more transparent and interact with customers in new ways. On the negative, they tend to treat it as PR, as I mentioned above. Most companies also fail to recognize the reciprocity factor in the blogosphere, which dictates that your readership is largely related to your degree of participation in your sector of said blogosphere.