The other day, I wrote about a character blog that came closer to achieving the genre’s potential than any of the other insipid character blogs that have emerged so far. I got one comment on the post. It came from Alex Niehaus who simpy wrote, “Thanks for talking about Frank???s blog. We???ve responded on our blog.”

“Our blog” is The Ipswitch Blog, the non-character (real?) blog from Ipswitch, a collaborative software company. In the post, Niehaus notes that nobody at Ipswitch had ever hard of character blogs. “n all honesty, we decided to do this without awareness of any corporate efforts to use blogging to enhance market presence. Really. We thought it???d be fun.”

...We set up some rules: it had to look ???authentic.??? That meant crummy, as Frank wasn???t a pro at blogging (it???s his first blog). It had to cut close to the bone, but not sever anyone???s limbs. Erica Ferencik insisted on rounding out Frank???s personality outside his mishaps at work, to add presence to the storyline. Finally, we didn???t hype it. Other than what we hoped were mysterious references in our ads, we didn???t ???announce??? our attempt at satire. We didn???t want to invite the wrath of the blogosphere for overt cooption of the medium. We respect the medium, and were trying to advance it by clearly separating it from this blog.

Hence my claim that the Willis character blog is better than any of the others…better than Captain Morgan and waaay better than the cow blog that has garnered so much attention. And hence my belief that there is room for character blogs, that each one needs to be judged on its merits without dismissing the category as a whole.