The September issue of MSDN Magazine, a publication for Microsoft developers, profiles the company's brilliant Channel 9 initiative. The site, a community for employees and customers, shows how Mr. Softy is thinking outside the box and is using blogs as a direct-to-audience channel that evangelizes customers.
More importantly, however, the story notes that Microsoft is also using Channel 9 as a listening device. Channel 9 helps Microsoft unearth very rich, previously unpublished user stories. These case histories hopefully are also snaking their way through Redmond to the company's corporate communications department. Microsoft PR should be regularly mining these stories, aggregating them, and pitching them to different publications. Perhaps they are already doing so. If not, I am sure they will soon.
Channel 9 represents the future of PR. It spans both old world PR (e.g. mediated PR via gatekeepers) and the New PR (e.g. unmediated, direct-to-audience communications). Keep your eye on this program.
