It's only been a few days since the Blog Council annouced its birth. Since then many bloggers have criticised the idea. Others have given it the benefit of the doubt. See Shel Israel (with links through to one of Dells bloggers take on it) and Jeff Jarvis
Founder members announced are AccuQuote, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Dell, Gemstar-TV Guide, General Motors, Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft, Nokia, SAP, Starwood Hotels and Resorts and Wells Fargo.
As it states on its web site:
The Blog Council is a community for official corporate blogs and bloggers that represent major global corporations.
Our mission is to address the unique needs of blogging in a corporate environment.
The Blog Council exists as a forum for executives to meet, share tactics and advice, and develop best practices. The organization teaches responsible, ethics-based corporate blogging.
The Blog Council CEO Andy Sernovitz is also CEO of GasPedal, a Word of Mouth communication consultancy. He also was a co-founder of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and author of the book Word of Mouth Marketing.
Having spend a large part of my working life in corporations (25 years) versus agency/freelance (9 years) I can fully understand where the Blog Council members are coming from. Look at the world of corporates - it is full of trade associations. Will it be just be a big talking shop or a 'best practice' forum? Will it help establish a legitimacy for other companies to start blogging? It holds it first meeting in January 2008.
Having been on Government working parties and trade associations I just hope it is one of those that does deliver value. Some of the founder companies are not active in Europe. Others are. I wonder if the multi-national vendors will look at things globally? The good news is that SAP have just had Shel complete a global 'social media' research project. Taking that to the first meeting would be a great first step.