Hello and welcome to WebOnyx’s blog. My name is Damian Gibbs and I am the business and marketing guy for our company. I would like to start off this blog with a couple of comments about the actions and interests of bloggers who have come before me. Every company, in fact every person, who writes a blog I believe should have something to say, a topic that they enjoy, and with any luck will have a unique take on the industry or topic that they choose to write about; although many do not. Bloggers often have many different reasons for why they write. Some because it is a way for them to organize their thoughts, others in the hope of gaining fame and notoriety, because they like the sound of their own voice. While others especially most corporate blogs write about their businesses, and they quickly morph their blog into more of a press release format. Bloggers are a varied bunch and in my journey along this blogging adventure I must choose what kind of blogger I will be.
The Internet world has over 112 million of blogs according to technorati. With my initial thoughts on blogging above I personally have a hard time jumping into the middle of that very large pond because I love original thoughts, and yet I have never been one that is so high and mighty on myself to think that I could possibly come up with something new and original that could make a meaningful difference in the vast macro chasm of thoughts and ideas. So when the others in my company asked me to start a blog about our adventure with creating and marketing our product Apella which we bill as a Social Information Exchange (what exactly that is I will get into with later posts) I was hesitant. I have read that most corporate blogs are not believed and that many founders of companies only blog every once in a while, or even just parrot or regurgitate thoughts and ideas from more prominent people. I must ask myself can I make a meaningful contribution to the company, the product, and our customers through this blog? With out taking away from our core principle of getting more customers?
I believe that I can do it, just as other members of our team believed that could start a consulting business, or could build Apella from the ground up, or believed in the product and people so much that they moved from California to join us. Because products and blogs are more then just the bits and bytes that we move around on our computer screen. They are the passions, thoughts and countless arguments between driven people to succeed where others have failed. Having said that I would like to announce two rules to myself about this blog. This blog will be used first to organize my own thoughts on the product we have created and process that we are using to make it better and introduce it to the world. Secondly, and more importantly we will be using it as a platform to not just tell you the interested reader what we are doing, but more importantly to get your feedback, to hear your thoughts on the features and direction that we should take the product.
I hope that you will place us in your RSS feed so that you can keep an eye on us. If our posts become too stiff or you have ideas on topics that you would like to hear our opinions on, please let us know. You are the reader, you are here for a reason and as customers and potential customers we hold you in the higest regard, because with out you there can be no us.
