I blog to network

Walter Higgins is part of my del.icio.us network so I took a look at his bookmark for Failure To Launch: Why Every Startup Should Have a Blog. The four reasons cited are to -

1. Find Co-Founders
2. Find Employees
3. Find Early Customers
4. Get Early Feedback
5. Find Investors

All valid reasons (and a good read) but which could possibly be summed up with one word - Network.

A mere few hours after blogging that I'm visiting Boston this weekend Jim Moore invited me to meet up with him for dinner when I get there. Among many other things Jim is a Senior Fellow at HLS Berkman Center and a best selling author. Naturally I'm very flattered by the invitation but the point of this post is not to name drop, rather it's to emphasise the incredible networking power of blogs.

If you'd told me 5 years ago, before I started blogging, that a thought leader I'd never met before, living thousands of miles away, would casually drop me an invitation to dinner on the basis of my amateur writings....... well, I wouldn't have even laughed.... I'd have just shook my head in pity ;-)