In an effort to increase customer awareness and popularity, five of Macromedia's "community managers" have started their own weblogs, to discuss Macromedia technologies and interact with consumers.

"Giving the community managers a platform on which they can use their own voice, that was our idea," Hale said. "Our format (on Macromedia.com) just wouldn't be as quick as a blog is. We do have a community section in there, but a blog is five sentences and 10 links. And that gets to the heart of why people trust blogs -- they like the format."

Hale added: "Would it have been a true blog if we put it on Macromedia.com? Not really."

Indeed, it was important to Macromedia that its blogs seemed true, that readers perceived them as the thoughts of very helpful community managers instead of corporate shills. If the effort felt disingenuous, like the company was merely jumping on the blogwagon, it could have backfired.

"I'd hate for you to think this is some kind of marketing agenda," Hale said. "If there is an agenda, our agenda is related to getting good information in people's hands."

The problem is that taking it off of Macromedia.com just blurs the line between it being a corporate comunications outlet and a true personal expressive publication. Are these people running the blogs as part of their jobs? Does Macromedia pay for their hosting? Are they anywhere near as likely to get fired for things they might say on their blog?

It's an interesting line to draw, or in this case, to blur. I'd wished for a Yahoo-oriented blog, but the torrents of customer-care type mail I'd get would be overwhelming, and I don't think Yahoo would go for an unofficial blog like that.

Still, I hope for the best for Macromedia and these blogs, and I hope they keep it honest. While Adobe might be pissed at Macromedia for infringing on their patent, I'm pissed at Macromedia for their push for a flash-based web. Here are leaders in the web technology field, pushing a position I can't believe that they truly believe in, because its success would mean profit for the company, at the expense of established online staandards and creating more consistancy usability problems than you can shake a fist at...

I find it ironic that blogging is one of the areas that Flash itself is particularly ill-suited for, and though Macromedia owns ColdFusion, they're using Blogger and Userland for the weblogs. Nevertheless, this might end up being a good thing. Back in the Newton days, the Newton developer community was helped immesurably by Apple's Newton Developer Technical Support staffers spending most of their day on the Newton Development newsgroup. They gave an amazing look behind the scenes, and more importantly, you could tell that the communication was two way. Several ideas that first came to light in the newsgroup's threads resurfaced again in subsequent versions of the OS.

What I'm trying to say is that not everyone can have the organically grown relationship that TiVo does with their customers, and we'll just have to see how mature Macromedia and their blogging cadre are about honesy vs marketing on the weblogs, basically, whether they use their blogs for good or evil.