Blogging is definitely an additional tool in the modern marketing arsenal. It gives the appearance of transparency and the idea that the developers may actually be engaging with the customer.
Do I sound cynical? Well, I should. I’ve seen a lot of blogs recently which talk about products but very few that are such blatant marketing fluff as this one (where Robert Scoble tells us that Halo 2 will be on Vista only because of technical issues which he can’t explain) or this one (where Scoble tells us that Office 2007 will be the bomb, er, just because, okay? Important to note how he waxes a little about Business Intelligence features and, um, pivot tables…and stuff. Apparently they’re going to be much easier. Er, Robert – you’re a professional blogger for a massive company. Does that give you an insight into actually running a business?).
I like the Scobleizer. I really enjoy his posts where he shows passion about something. If it’s a third party product then you know it’s because of his passion. If it’s a Microsoft product then you can tell the examples he’s passionate about. And the problem is that these recent posts both read like his boss told him to get blogging. No-one can get passionate about telling everyone that a years-old game on years-old hardware will require a brand new PC and a brand new operating system just to run. It’s hard to get passionate about Excel 2007 pivot tables because….well…if you have a hard time understanding why then you’re probably just in the target market for that product. And wow, I’d like to see that Venn diagram….
Now I’m going to admit that I’m going to be a marketing shill for our first product but I have the advantage that this product is being built for me. Not maybe for me personally but I’m going to be one of the first users and I’ve been looking forward to this for years and I have a team who are gagging for exactly this product in a production environment (as well as a group of prospective beta testers). Just needed to find the right combination of technology and a great code monkey 
Blogging is great, and er…stuff….