i’ve seen that about comcast, but do not use their service, so haven’t come into contact with it. there are plenty of other companies also glomming on to new media products like twitter, but i’m wondering when we’ll be able to say it’s here to stay. i think it’s far from it, even though CNN, NYTimes, and WSJ all use it fairly extensively.

what would be an enticing way for a company to interact with you online? how about beyond products, and into overall reputation?

Most of my experience of being “interacted with” by companies is in the form of half-baked comments to my blog. For example, on a recent post about weatherizing my apartment, someone left a long comment about how to deal with the door. It was perfectly useful information and she wasn’t shilling a product, but her link went back to a webpage for a company that sold stoves (for heat, not cooking) and so I was immediately suspicious. Ultimately I didn’t allow the comment to be posted. I see this kind of thing as companies trying to use the community (however small) that I have built to sell whatever they are trying to sell, and that’s not the point of my blog. For heavens’ sake, I’m not even making money off of it, I’m certainly not going to help anyone else use my blog to do so.