I previously talked about what makes compelling media... soon realized it was heading in a different direction.
Example: do you want to hear an executive talking about how cool their company and products are? or hear about an executive talk about business problems, ecological issues and more?
Jonathan's blog is the prefect example of that. True transparency.
But let's go a step further... does it need to be an employee of that company telling the story? Absolutely not. In the "not-so-new" wave of user generated content, users speak out about the good, the bad and the ugly about someone else's products and services. People trust this information more because because they know it's real. Users don't have anything to gain or lose from the information they give...
Bottom line: We need more word of mouth from mavens - versus - managers talking about their company's products.
That is... UNTIL we come across another tipping point when the true mavens (non-biased experts) become corrupted. I've seen this already. Companies paying bloggers to do product placement for them... that will ultimately turn blogging into another billboard and we'll just tune it out, losing this precious communication channel.