Blogs: The Media Bellwether

Blogs are becoming the media bellwether. Yes, you do have to be careful and blogs should not be a substitute for good ol’ fashioned research and common sense, as I touched upon in a previous blog entry, ‘Could the Loss of the Newsroom Cause Problems?‘ However, blogs can point you in the right direction if used properly, and can even warn you of pending problems and help you understand trends.

For example, I was considering buying a MacBook Pro. However, the models I was looking at came out last summer. If I was going to spend the money, I wanted to get the biggest bang for my buck by purchasing the latest model.

I wanted to see when the next release might be coming out. Apple wasn’t going to tell me this, because they still needed to sell their current stock.

So, I turned to blogs.

In late May, I came across a blog from LoopRumors that reported PiperJaffray analyst Gene Munster, predicted the new MacBook Pros would be released by Apple at WWDC, the Worldwide Developers Conference, around June 11.

I kept monitoring the blogs and last weekend came across a post at Engadget that said Apple would be releasing the new MacBook Pros today, June 5, to coincide with Apple’s Back to School program.

I got up this morning to check Apple’s site and got a message that it was being updated. A couple of hours later Apple was advertising the new Macbook Pros on its site.

If it wasn’t for the blogosphere, I could be lamenting the fact I should have waited a couple more weeks.

5 June 2007 | General Information, Media Analysis, New Media, Trends | Comments