Jeremy Wagstaff wrote an interesting piece yesterday about HP.

HP have started blogging. However, they are still on the learning curve. Earlier this week on David Gee’s blog (David is head of worldwide marketing for HP’s management software business a.k.a HP OpenView) a comment left on the site, which was civil but critical of HP, was pulled from the site.

A storm ensued and the comment was re-instated. David Gee posted an explanation of what happened

Earlier this week, an HP customer posted a comment about his experience upgrading a media center PC. His experience was not good and he let us know. We pulled the comment. This was a bad decision and we have reversed it

He went on to say

This was a good learning experience for us and we strive to maintain honest and open communication with our customers. If we are going to use blogging as a legitimate connection between us and our customers, we need to choose either to be in all the way or out. We choose to be in. We want to hear from you

Isn’t it amazing the speed with which blogs are forcing transparency on businesses – and as more businesses start to blog, this level of transparency and accountability will become the norm. Companies who don’t adapt to this new reality will lose market share to companies who embrace it.