As I observe the evolving role of the Blogosphere in the corporate world, I am struck that we still seem to be very much at the early stages of development in terms of companies embracing the use of the blogosphere in their own marketing thinking - certainly in the United Kingdom at any rate.

The recent link up between PR giant Edelman and Technorati seems to be a significant step forward in the process of the blogosphere entering the mainstream. Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman, seems to be taking a consistently radical view that his industry needs to go through a major upheaval and that responding to the opportunities that the blogosphere presents is a big part of this. For Edelman’s own views on the link-up read his own posting on this.

Two things stand out for me. First, his comment on the power of consumer generated content and of the need to persuade companies of the benefit of ceding control to the crowd. Second, his belief in the need for analytic tools to understand and work with bloggers. My suspicion is that creating the tools will be easier than persuading the coporate role to cede control. It’s going to be interesting to see!