Why would I say that mainstream companies be afraid of Bloggers. There are several reasons and I have come to this conclusion:
1. A bevy of Cease and Desist orders are now starting to be sent to bloggers CNet Part 1, CNet. Part 2, Miramax, USOC. Obviously these companies are starting to see a impact on their bottom line otherwise they would not waste their lawyers time.
2. Bloggers are making huge impacts on search engine results, many times the information that consumers get presented is not what companies want publicized. This site alone gets over 50,000 hits a day from people just searching for information. This may not be a huge number but If I sway one persons opinion then they will sway those in that they know there is a domino effect.
3. Bloggers are consumers and have and usually speak from real life experience thus the reader gets a real review versus a companies canned message.
4. Companies are trying to narrow fair use standards by intimidating individuals that do not normally have the financial power to stand up to the corporate lawyers.
The world is changing quickly and like the Recording Industry so to will the print media have to change the way they do business. I anticipate that there will be a considerable lower demand for paper products as magazine subscribers numbers continue to fall this will have a impact on advertising companies and also on the companies wishing to advertise as they will not have to shift that advertising on-line in order to reach target audiences. They will have to become creative because non of us like spam nor do we like pop up ads.
Ultimately the bloggers will win as Corporate America will have to buy advertising space on Blogs in order to attempt to get their product seen by consumers. Until they adopt that model, they will try very hard to retain there print and web based readership by attempting to restrict what bloggers post/quote about their articles and their products.
Techdirt goes deeper into the Cease and Desist issue their article helped me spawn this editorial. [Techdirt]