The Danish Cancer society is (not) blogging

The Danish blogosphere is up in arms over The Cancer Society’s misuse of the term “weblog”.

It is evident that what they’re doing is not a weblog, and it’s equally clear that they’re calling it a weblog.

And so what?

I can’t really see what the big deal is here. What damage does it do to us, to Danish society, to the princesses, or to the work to find a cure for cancer?

If there’s a crime, who is the victim?

It reminds me of back when the web was new. Everybody and his mother had to get on the web. Which they did, typically in a pretty helpless fashion. Getting on the web is the easy part. The realization that this would forever change the demands on your organization from its customers/citizens/members took much longer. And the cultural and organizational change needed to put that realization into practice, and to honor those demands is still so far from over it’s not even funny.

Blogs, just like the web itself, call for a much deeper cultural and organizational change. A change we cannot reasonably expect the Cancer Society to put in place at this point.

So instead of bashing them over the misuse of the term, why not laud them for at least realizing that this is something worth experimenting with. Perhaps they’ll read a book and go on to make a more honest second try. And in their third or fourth attempt, they might actually get a conversation going through a real weblog.

I’d understand it if the members asked for a real conversation, for example through a blog. But that’s not what I’m seeing.

I really don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Who is the victim?