Beware the big company that tries to venture into this, the small world owned by its individuals, without proper respect and perspective. Consider:
* Flickr natives are planning a revolt against Yahoo for consolidating identities.
* Look at the comments under my interview with CBS blogger Vaughn Ververs. I tried to warn CBS that objective blogging wouldn’t work and, sure enough, bloggers threw tomatoes.
* MySpace folks fretted at the purchase of their world by News Corp.
* Though hardly a major media conglomerate — yet — Weblogs Inc. found itself the target of a few snowballs over its contract. A company’s a company, a contract’s a contract, money’s money, that’s life, and I’m not sure there’s a thing they should have done differently. But even this is illustration that this is a newly delicate dance.
The issue is that we, the people, believe we own this space — not just blogs, not just online, but anyplace where we put our effort and trust and money. And isn’t it modern corporate nirvana to be a “we company” instead of a “they company”? But you have to mean it.