I was listening to Talk of the Nation on NPR last week week. If you do not follow national politics, you would not consider the topic of that episode interesting. Neal Conan was interviewing Matt Bai, the author of “The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics.” Matt argues that democrats’ policy of presenting a unified front is affecting their ability to create new ideas that influence ideology and culture. The interesting part  of the program was when a professor of history dialed into the show and was the first to comment. He started by saying that he was shocked why none of the democratic candidates went to the LDC and instead they chose to go the some blogger convention. The professor continued to ask, “Where did these stupid bloggers come from.” Unfortunately the link on NPR’s site to the recording of this show is not working.

So here are some thoughts:

Blogging is popular. Or is it? With over 60 million blogs online in May, blogging is popular. Yet there are many people who still do not have a clue about it. I wonder how much of the population actually reads blogs regularly. So I conducted a quick informal survey. I asked the client team members what blogs they read regularly. Of a team of 20 engineers, only one of them read any blogs. But this doesn’t mean blogging isn’t popular and hasn’t caught on.

Bloggers are affecting national debate: Yes politicians are finally listening and it is our turn to do some of the talking. I am cynical by nature so I wonder how much of this will continue after the elections. Of course it does not stop with politics. Large companies are acting much faster to resolve customer complaints when bloggers write about them. Yes, I finally feel empowered.

What are you reading? This blog is about marketing. Most of the blogs I read are business blogs in nature. If bloggers who write about politics are causing such a stir, I decided that I should expand my horizons and add different types of blogs to my reading list.

What do you think?