Ah, let the controversy reign.  Another big company has decided to jump into the Blogosphere to help build buzz about their products, and again they are blowing it.  Panasonic has a video geek blog allegedly authored by "Tosh Bilowski".  I say allegedly because thought he claims to exist, it's hard to prove that he does.  Amy drew my attention to this with her post asking just who is Tosh Bilowski? and Dave follows suit with asking whether character or "fake" blogs just always plain wrong.
 
While I've defended character blogs in the past, no dice on this one.  This isn't a character blog (e.g. the Moose Tracks blog) where it's clear that the author isn't a real person, this blog is supposed to be written by a real person, Tosh Bilowski.  The problem is that it doesn't look like Tosh exists.  Ads by AdGenta.comAmy and I Googled him and came up with bubkus.  Sorry, if you've been using the Internet at all in the past, you're going to leave a trace.  It's pretty much inevitable.  Check out these Google searches on my name (short and long forms).  You will find references to my life as an academic (co-authored papers and book chapters), lab manager (how to get imaging software to work), tech support person, webmaster, and blogger.  The record goes back well over a decade.  What's my point?  Look if Tosh is about my age (looks like it) and he's a true vid geek, he should be pinging up on e-mail lists, newsgroups, websites, etc.
 
Panasonic blew it here.  Yes, they are going to earn a lot of Google juice with our gabbing, but in the end, this is a bad thing.  There are plenty of experienced bloggers and video geeks out there who would be more than happy to blog on Panasonic's dime.  Creating a character like Vid Geek or something would have been better than out-right lying.
 
So, I hope whatever ad agency suggested that they start a blog with person who doesn't appear to exist, is also tracking the blogosphere and reading our commentary.  It's never too late to change course.
 
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