Are Blogs liberating? On our way back home the other day, we had a lively debate. The participants : Bijoy, the “boss-man” of Motoring and Open Sky, his man-everyday, Srini,  and the man who points North, our Compass Editor, Niraj.

Srini’s tirade: Blogs spread misinformation.
Niraj’s defence: they help everyone discover the writer within.

The lawyer in Bijoy (he’s a law grad), won the argument.

His observation: Even a group of five people in distant… (I think he said, Ernakulam) …are forming opinions in a street corner debate.

So, Blogs are basically street-corner discussions, magnified a zillion times. Often, they create opinions. When put together like a puzzle, it could present the accurate picture. With maybe, a slight blur.

At least, it’s better than getting it completely wrong. Or one-sided, for that matter. With embedded journalists, we would have seen a completely different picture of the Iraq war. Thank god for the Internet and the Blogs. Assuming that a majority of people in this universe speak the truth, or write about it, they will outshout and outnumber the ones with a vindictive agenda. Unless… advertising takes over? (That last line was just for effects)

Judgement: Blogs free the human mind. People can speak their mind and not be afraid of getting slapped (and I don’t mean with a legal notice).

The takeaway: At one level, Blogs can unveil the true consumer.

If used as a research tool, Blogs could save companies millions of rupees, or create millions. Imagine, product managers test-marketing new product concepts through Blogs, ad men getting a feel of the “real” consumer. The next stop for market research is going to be the Blogs. Or, it already is.

In fact, at a recently held Asia-Pacific seminar by ESOMAR, the global standards council for market research, this was a point of discussion. If some people were speaking about it, then someone else is already doing it.