Blog Reports: Are The Traditional Analyst Firms Kidding?

I have maintained for years that the traditional analyst firms — like Gartner and Forrester — are, in general, way out of touch with what is going on at the creative fringe. To some extent, that makes sense, since their raison d’etre is to read the tea leaves for big, risk-averse, slow-moving, late adopter enterprises. With the exception of the occasional savant, like Charlene Li, the sorts of people drawn to these analyst roles, today, are a strange hybrid of journalist and consultant, with some of the positive and negative characteristics of both. They sometimes wrap themselves in the brand of the analyst firm, deriving their authority from the brand rather than their own experience and insight. Often, they seem to have no real business experience, like journalists.

So it comes as little surprise when you stumble across a title like this — Forrester Research: Blogging: Not Even Close To Mainstream — and come to find out that blogging is not mainstream.

Of course, this Forrester piece was written back in 2003, and is countered by Charlene Li’s recent “Blogging: Bubble or Big Deal?” report, which exhorts corporations to get on with it in order to influence the influencers.

At least in the world of blogging, the old dumb stuff we wrote back in 2003 is concealed in the archives, and not pulled up in the face of every visitor based on some keyword search.

But still, I believe that this is just another example of how the analyst firms trying to bank on making timid recommendations to their clients, playing on their fervent hope that tomorrow will be like yesterday. I bet that a quick analysis of the leading firms reports on blogging prior to the 2004 elections would have generally supported the view that blogs are out of the mainstream, cater to greasy-haired geeks, and can be conveniently ignored. How many corporations would have been significantly farther down the road with social media today if more people like Charlene had been coaxing them to take giant steps toward the 21st century, instead of keeping their heads in the sand?