Steve Shu's 21Publish Blog

Boogie Medien has partnered with 21Publish to launch and manage an blog community for HLX, one of the leading, low-cost provider airlines in Germany (likened to JetBlue as I understand things - Stefan, why not Southwest?). Travelers can now share their experiences on transit, destinations, etc. Stefan posts more about it here. Congrats to HLX!

Blog communities are definitely something that companies with inherent, sizeable bases of customers should consider (can also be considered for small communities too, but ones with large communities may simply be missing the boat if they don't give any consideration). Consider the MBA blog community 21Publish launched for BusinessWeek, which draws from BusinessWeek's large online reader base. While an older Scoble post has got me thinking about whether we should be calling communities like these end-user generated content, participant-generated content, etc. communities (I had to think twice about this 'cause I don't want to be in the slave business!), in my mind companies are trying to use these online presences to make things work both for the company and for end users people. A loose analogy can be drawn to the sitting areas in Starbucks - it is a nice way for companies to facilitate a conversation in a loosely-defined but themed atmosphere.