I'm kidding, of course. But the thought did occur to me upon reading this morning's coverage of the indictment of White House top aide Scooter Libby (Vice President Cheney's chief of staff). Quoted in the Washington Post is David King of Harvard's Institute of Politics:

"Bush (ought to) at least give the appearance of being open to criticism and willing to change," especially in light of the fact

I'm kidding, of course. But the thought did occur to me upon reading this morning's coverage of the indictment of White House top aide Scooter Libby (Vice President Cheney's chief of staff). Quoted in the Washington Post is David King of Harvard's Institute of Politics:

"Bush (ought to) at least give the appearance of being open to criticism and willing to change," especially in light of the fact that "there is a larger question in this administration of whether there is willingness to hear dissent."

Hmm... sounds familiar, doesn't it? Isn't that pretty much the point of a corporate blog: to give the appearance that a company is open to what customers have to say even if it's negative?

Kind of reminds me of the current buzz over SixApart's travails with its popular TypePad blogging service. It took a while (too long) but 6A finally responded - through co-founder…

Update (2 days later): SixApart's CEO Barak Berkowitz provides more details. He posted his Message from the CEO to the TypePad blog and also sent it in an HTML email to customers:

Dear Debbie,  

As you might know, some of our users have been experiencing slow performance with the TypePad service over the past few weeks...

Pretty nice. To back up a minute... we (meaning a bunch of Business Blog

Update (2 days later): SixApart's CEO Barak Berkowitz provides more details. He posted his Message from the CEO to the TypePad blog and also sent it in an HTML email to customers:

Dear Debbie,  

As you might know, some of our users have been experiencing slow performance with the TypePad service over the past few weeks...

Pretty nice. To back up a minute... we (meaning a bunch of Business Blog Consulting contributors) are taking partial responsibility for these blogged responses from SixApart. We started complaining vociferously on Wednesday Oct. 26, 2005 (first me and then Tris Hussey, Rich Brooks, Toby Bloomberg and Paul Chaney) about the recent slowness and outages with TypePad, SixApart's popular hosted blogging service.

The result? Last night, SixApart co-founders Mena and Ben Trott posted a reponse, the first real explanation we've…

Speaking of blog writing by CEOs (or top execs), this is cool... I'm thrilled to announce that Bob Lutz, GM's vice chairman of global product development, is writing the Foreword to my book, The Corporate Blogging Book (Penguin Portfolio).

Bob is GM's most high-profile blogger as you probably know. Not too far a stretch to say he's one of the first A-list bloggers for the Fortune 500.

I asked

Speaking of blog writing by CEOs (or top execs), this is cool... I'm thrilled to announce that Bob Lutz, GM's vice chairman of global product development, is writing the Foreword to my book, The Corporate Blogging Book (Penguin Portfolio).

Bob is GM's most high-profile blogger as you probably know. Not too far a stretch to say he's one of the first A-list bloggers for the Fortune 500.

I asked him... and he said Yes. He just emailed me a draft of the foreword. More than a draft really. It's terrific. He's an awfully good writer and yes, I think he wrote it himself. Thanks Bob, for a wonderful contribution to the book.

Oh, and we finally have a sub-title:

Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right

I'm in the home stretch of writing although there's still a…

I dunno. It's a feeling. It's an invisible line. I came awfully close a few minutes ago... when I posted about recent problems with TypePad, SixApart's hosted blogging service. I count several of 6A's executives as friends and colleagues. I'm a huge supporter of the company. I want them to succeed. I recommend their products all the time. I hope the problem is temporary and that they'll fix

I dunno. It's a feeling. It's an invisible line. I came awfully close a few minutes ago... when I posted about recent problems with TypePad, SixApart's hosted blogging service. I count several of 6A's executives as friends and colleagues. I'm a huge supporter of the company. I want them to succeed. I recommend their products all the time. I hope the problem is temporary and that they'll fix it.

At the same time, I want 6A to listen to their customers. That's what it's all about in this new bloggy age, isn't it?

Update: SixApart's Anil Dash responds.

Technorati: sixapart + typepad

As I wrote here and here a few weeks ago, I'm one of thousands running a business blog on TypePad. The service has been excruciatingly slow of late. (Just now I thought I'd tear my hair out while waiting for this post to Save.) Sometimes it's down altogether.

Don't get me wrong. This is not a "trash 6A" blog entry. It's a please please please listen to your customers before it's too late

As I wrote here and here a few weeks ago, I'm one of thousands running a business blog on TypePad. The service has been excruciatingly slow of late. (Just now I thought I'd tear my hair out while waiting for this post to Save.) Sometimes it's down altogether.

Don't get me wrong. This is not a "trash 6A" blog entry. It's a please please please listen to your customers before it's too late message. The buzz is building. There's talk of moving some high-profile blogs (including BusinessBlogConsulting to which I'm a contributor) to WordPress or another platform.

My advice? Post fast. Post fresh. Be transparent. The blogosphere is gonna bite if you don't. And get something up on your Status Blog (which, BTW, doesn't have an archive so it's conspicuously not quite a blog) or on Mena's Corner that acknowledges…