Mini-Roundup for May 25th

Over on the Vario Creative Blog, Mark Cahill had an interesting post early in the week that discussed journalism vs. blogging. His post was inspired by a recent blogosphere rumor in which the word was that Apple would be delaying its shipment of iPhones. The result was that Apple had a market cap loss of $2b by the time the rumor was squelched.

For those of us who are mostly blogging about our opinions as marketers, fact checking, ethics, and other journalistic "niceties" don't tend to have all that much application. Still, I'd urge all bloggers to read Mark's post, an imagine a world in which "citizen journalists" replace professional journalists. Lots to think about there.

On a lighter note, The Opinionated Marketers haven't been shy about blogging about jargon. It is the curse of the technology marketer, and - much as I try to avoid it myself - I never seem to completely reverse the curse when I write for my customers.

Here's a bit of what we've had to say about jargon:

Jargon Monoxide

The Special Language of Business

Telltale Signs for All

So, as  technology marketer, I really enjoyed Deni Connor's recent story in Network World, Top 10: IT jargon you just love to hate. I mostly agree with Deni's picks - like value add, solutions-oriented, and reduced TCO (ugh!). But the little riff on the use of acronyms...Well, if you're marketing VPNs the people you're maketing to will likely understand what a VPN is. Maybe a first time full write-out of the term is appropriate, especially in a piece that will be read by non-techs, but, come on, buyers don't want to be stopped dead in their tracks by having to read and absorb "Virtual Private Network". Most times, VPN will do.

To all our readers, enjoy the first weekend of summer. Happy Memorial Day to all, especially to our veterans and to those currently serving in the military.