Bill Gates spends an hour with influential bloggers by Microsoft Windows XP

Filed under: Products and services, Practice, Insiders, Blogs, Microsoft (MSFT)

What do you get when you pair the world's richest man with a group full of influential bloggers from around the world? Quite naturally, you get 60 minutes of straight talk (the "dope" as they say) about all-things-Microsoft that rarely is granted to any of the press, let alone a group of bloggers (some independent, some corporate employees) who have free reign on what they write, ask and expand on.

Are larger companies becoming more friendly to the blogging community? If not, they should be -- because gone are the days of half-truths and lopsided marketing spin and here are the days of citizen journalism and true knowledge empowerment to consumers who know where to look (hint: not in the newspaper).

It's interesting to see that bloggers from some of the more well-read blogs on the web will sit down with a man who has considerable input and influence into the computing and business world for a no-holds barred conversation. This is something Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has had to acknowledge and accept in this age of "transparency or death." More companies need to make their senior executives available to the "citizen journalists" of the blogosphere, don't you agree? That, or face the wrath of objective feedback.