Are MSDN Blogs Useful?

Mikehall blogged Here's some questions for you...

1. Why do you read blogs, and more specifically, why do you read Microsoft blogs ?
2. Has your impression of Microsoft as a company changed from reading blogs and viewing MSDN Channel 9 or the video podcasts from MEDC/TechEd content ?
3. Should we (Microsoft bloggers) translate the content we produce on the blog into technical white papers or support knowledge base articles rather than posting to the blog ?
4. Have you seen Microsoft make product design decisions based on feedback in the community/blogs ?
5. How about bug fixes, have you seen any bug fixes, or power toys created directly from your community/blog feedback ?

I'm interested to know whether this is a useful way for Microsoft to share information with you, our customers...

If you have some ideas on this, comment on his post here. If you are not familiar with MSDN Blogs, check them out here

Rick Segal blogged The most important aspect of all of this is a new way to communicate with people that you might ordinarily either not know about or have a hard time getting to. This isn’t an invitation to just dump random technical support questions on employees of any company who starts blogging. Ignoring that detail, blogs are amazingly good ways to ‘talk’ with people about the larger issues with respect to products, services, etc.... I’ve noticed, for example, a number of bloggers on particular products that actively engage with the folks in the comments section regarding features and thoughts about what needs to get accomplished. Also, information on how products are being used by you are particularly valuable to product leads..... That to me, is the real beauty of Blogs and all this open media stuff. You can get to this guy and he wants to hear from you. In fact, as a general rule, people who are blogging will talk with you. They do listen, do react, and do care. General rule, exceptions are out there. The edge you can get when it comes to using, understanding, getting value from your suppliers, partners, etc, is to seek out those that are blogging because they are the ones that generally care the most and will be very interested in what you have to say. Standard rules of being nice, lucid, etc, apply. Over time, this will become “normal” but for now, jump on it. Seek out bloggers, they are the best first contacts you can find.

I believe the MSDN blogs can be very useful ways for people to share ideas with developers. I just wish more companies would do what Microsoft has done.