Edelman & Technorati are teaming up to better localize, track & translate the global blogosphere. The intimacy of the relationship between a major PR firm and a major search engine raises fascinating issues. Here's the official word according to the Technorati blog:"Technorati and Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm, are announcing a relationship that's all about supporting the international growth of the blogosphere.Certainly, Edelman is to be applauded - imagine the competitive advantage that this brings to the table when they are pitching for a global brand! Large consumer brands operate in a real-time, 24/7, global communications environment, and --- at least until 2007 --- only Edelman can now compete at that level."Technorati is accelerating the development of fully localized versions of our service in Chinese, Korean, German, Italian and French. These will be moving through development and testing over the coming months and will be complete, public products in early 2007. (Technorati today can show posts in 20 languages, but so far we've only done completely localized versions in English and Japanese).
"Edelman is providing support for this accelerated development effort and will have access to these new sites as they are in development and testing this year. They will be working with their international clients on how to listen to and engage the blogosphere. How to move away from one-way, command and control marketing towards the conversational era we've entered."
I am a li'l troubled by this move on Technorati's part, though. Aren't all PR firms and corporate marketers currently "working with clients on how to listen and engage the blogosphere"?
Giving one agency an early, proprietary lead --- if that's what is happening (it is unclear just now) --- seems to go against the grain of our open movement...
Imagine if the recently-unveiled Google Trends had been exclusively available to Fleishman-Hillard, for a year before its public debut. How would that have made you feel?
UPDATE: More troubling questions about this issue raised at the LooseWire blog, by WSJ columnist Jeremy Wagstaff. Edelman's been keeping tabs on this conversation. But it's Technorati that has some 'splainin' to do, if you ask me. When will the Technorati folks respond to all this, I wonder?