Techdirt lets companies contact expert bloggers — discreetly — for advice
There is a lot going on at the Office 2.0 Conference this week, and we point to Rafe Needleman’s blog overview. He has blogged the main points, and describes the companies that are worthy of mention.
We moderated a panel, and may have more. But we want to call attention to one notable addition, which comes from Techdirt. Techdirt is a Belmont news site that runs popular blog Techdirt. We mentioned it in February, because it is doing well. It makes money by serving Fortune 500 companies with a recommended diet of reading (articles from blogs and other publications), so that their employees stay better informed.
Michael Masnick, chief executive (pictured here), keeps building out the news service with new features — and this week launched a way for his Fortune 500 clients to reach out to a stable of expert bloggers for advice.
The service is called Insight Community. Techdirt contracts with an ad-hoc group of analysts, and pays them for providing their private opinions, feedback, strategy tips, or whatever. This advice goes to the companies that request it. Techdirt makes both sides “blind,” in that the company and the analyst don’t know each other’s identity. This protects them from getting too cozy with each other, and keeps the integrity of the analysis intact. TechDirt is the broker between them, taking a cut — and will allow both sides to graduate, if they choose, to direct communication.
Below is a chart describing how it works:
It has already signed up SAP and Verisign as customers. Here is Verisign’s testimony, which describes how Techdirt’s analysts helped the company better understand the complex issue of network neutrality.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
