From 0 users to 40,000 users in less than 9 months; growing at a rate of 300 users per day; an annualized growth rate of over 270%; dollars spent on advertising and marketing-zero. Is Blogger the next killer app? Not quite. But it may be the accelerator that rips the doors off of corporate marketing. Here's why.

"What the hell is Blogger?" That's the question that I hear a lot these days. Introducing, "Blogger": the web-based application that you've never heard of. Guess who has, college kids. Blogger is exploding in the same birthing grounds that gave rise to the Napster phenomenon.

Blogger (https://www.blogger.com) comes from the ancient Internet term, "weblog" (John Barger first coined the term in 1997). In 1998 there were only a few weblogs. These weblogs were crude pages of random thoughts and musings kept largely by an online community of techno-geeks. As of early 1999, Jesse James Garrett compiled the 23 weblogs known to be in existence at that time. It was then that Peter Merholz decided to produce what he called a "wee-blog," thus making the editor a "blogger."

It's almost easier to talk about what Blogger is not, than what Blogger is. Blogger is not another chat vehicle; not another posting board; not simply a file transfer service; not simply a web-publishing vehicle. Blogger is all of these rolled into a robust package and mixed with groupware and peer-to-peer concepts. Blogger describes itself as, "amphetamines for your website."

Here's how it works: download Blogger's extremely small browser-based application and supply Blogger with your FTP (file transfer protocol) address and password. A template is then selected onto which blogger will write. This template could be simply a blank page, or complex java script and active server pages that are professionally built. In either case, Blogger supplies you with a space on their site within which you can edit, collaborate and enhance your blogs. Blogger's link application embeds itself in the right click menu of your mouse. Therein you'll find a tab that says, "Blog This!" Having clicked on that tab, a window separate from your browser will appear with an automatic link to the page that you're currently visiting. Once in this window, you add your commentary, perspective or criticism. From this point you're literally one click away from this material being "published" to the web. With Blogger, the most novice of users may now begin to post, link, upload, download and generally put anything they desire on the web in a matter of seconds.

At base, Blogger is the doorway to a fundamental Internet truth: there are two Internets. One Internet is the brochure-ware of the corporate world. This is the Internet of the everyday. On this net, corporations talk of "customer satisfaction," "providing unparalleled X," and "caring about our employees." It is the Internet of corporate PR departments. And, quite frankly, it sucks.

The second Internet is one rarely seen. Your children know it. Students see it. The IT guy in the basement that nobody talks to at company picnics-he's there. It is the net of storytellers, techno-geeks and eccentrics. This net is the seething underbelly of corporate brochure-ware. This net uses big words, hurls insults, and speaks its mind. Occasionally, this net sneaks onto Yahoo! Chat boards to criticize a corporate entity. If you spend any time at all on this side of the net, you come to find that it embodies a quality that the corporate net will never touch: enthusiasm.

Blogger, in all of its innocent flexibility, is bridging these two nets. In truth, the underbelly has been talking with the corporate for quite some time now. Blogger just makes it easy-really easy. And, simple as it sounds, it will alter the way your company does business, for one simple reason: mass marketing cannot withstand the authenticity of the individual.

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Personalization, permission marketing, target marketing, one to one marketing-these marketing entities are all aimed at finding ways to get through to the consumer. They all make the same primary assumption: the consumer has stopped listening to traditional marketing. Ask yourself: how many advertisements did you see on your way to work today? Name the first ten. Odds are, you can't. Now ask yourself: how much money did your company spend last year on precisely this kind of advertising. You might as well take that money out into the corporate atrium and have a bonfire-it'd be more fun, and you'd get more attention.

Mass marketing, at its very core, is concerned with reaching as many consumers as possible. And in this age of information deluge, the common truth is actually true: no one pays attention anymore. Surprisingly, all of the marketing initiatives in the world gloss over this simple fact: humans interact. Further, if by some strange synchronicity, those humans feel a connection, they continue to interact-willingly. All of the marketing dollars in the world can't manipulate this willingness.

Companies that are modeled on the mass marketing/production/media complex are predicated on the idea that the company "message" should be crafted, controlled and shoved down the consumer's throat. Notice the lack of willingness in that interaction. These companies are now faced with the absolute failure of the current marketing regime. The train wreck that is mass marketing is justifying itself only through the not-so-persuasive rallying cry of "that's how we've always done it."

Blogger suggests a better way. Blogger opens the doorway to harvesting the one great untouched asset of your company: every employee's ability to interact. Imagine if the fear surrounding the manipulation of your company's message subsided for a moment. Might it not be possible to actually facilitate the type of interaction that is already occurring? And what if, through a blogger page for each employee, you began to dissolve the corporate boundary that is actually preventing you from telling the great stories of your company? Such stories do not get told from the exalted pulpit of public relations and marketing. People tell great stories. Blogger can easily connect the people inside your company to the people outside of your company in ways that were not possible before.

Or you could have that bonfire in the atrium.