Bob Bly has joined Yesterday’s Experts

It is a sad thing to see someone with obvious talent demonstrate to all and sundry that he does not understand what is happening in the world around him.

Bob Bly, a direct marketing guru of considerable reputation, seems to have joined that distinguished roster of experts like Ken Olsen and Thomas Jefferson who could not grasp the fact that technology had moved beyond their ability to understand it.

His article, Can Blogging Help Market Your Product in Direct Marketing News displays an amazing ignorance of blogging. It would appear that he has relied upon hearsay rather than upon direct inspection.

He confidently states: 

There are two major problems with blogging as a business-building tool.

The first is that most blogs I encounter are rambling, streams-of-consciousness musings about a topic of interest to the author, largely bereft of the practical, pithy tips that e-zines, Web sites and white papers offer.

This shows clearly that he has not read Adrants, What is your Brand Mantra,  Tom Peters or any of a score of excellent business weblogs which dispense invaluable information..

I am sure that he will get an earful of constructive criticism, now
that he has revealed his impending dinosaurhood, but he may choose,
like Dan Rather, to ignore the voices behind the curtain he has so
carefully erected.

I hope he doesn’t persist in his present course. We will know soon enough whether he does…

(Via Jennifer, who typifies the business blogger he might well emulate.)

UPDATE: Bob and I are already engaged in an email conversation.  If my perceptions are correct, he may be blogging circles around us before we know what’s happening. This promises to become an interesting evolution.  Nope! He is insists on remaining yesterday’s expert.

Update: 11/06/04 He has no intention of learning something new. He
is a nice guy, but does not understand that two-way communication
trumps continuous outflow when it comes to developing relationships. 

A late-breaking realization:

No single individual or group controls the blogosphere. Every
new talent that is assimilated changes what the blogosphere is capable
of. 

It’s a self-organizing, self-correcting publishing network – absolutely unthinkable a few years ago and it mutates continually.

It’s like something out of the old sci-fi novels…except that it is a good thing, only terrifying to Main Stream Media, or people stuck in the past.