I was hoping to be among the first editors to post to this blog, but Jess, Lauren, and Chris are younger and quicker than I am. (*sigh* Ahh, the kids today, with their music and their Interwebs.) So a belated welcome to our new thing.

In keeping with my lateness, the first topic I want to discuss is one that popped up during our recent conference. Patrick Bultema, CEO of CodeBaby, led a lively discussion about adding Web 2.0 technologies to existing enterprises, and I think attendees got a lot out of it. especially in terms of opening minds to the changing concept of what a customer is. There were two items, though, that didn’t work as well for me as they seem to have done for other people, and I wanted to get your thoughts on them. One is the nature of emotion on the Web; the other is what CodeBaby does.

First item: Bultema described the Web as an “emotion-free zone,” and when he said that my eyebrow went up Spock-style. Most two-way communication on the Web is text-based, he noted, but real communication requires much more than words on a page (or screen). Pushing text or video at customers is not an effective loyalty hook. “Loyalty is driven by emotion,” he said, and suggested that the current model is to co-opt the emotion from an existing community and make it part of your business.

Communication is certainly better when there’s more than mere text involved, but I don’t agree that emotion is absent from the written word. Instant communication between distant individuals is not that old a concept. You (or your parents) may remember a time when not everybody had a telephone in their home, long-distance calls were a special event, and party lines weren’t something advertised on late-night TV. For thousands of years, people communicated effectively at a distance through writing. Love affairs were conducted with the pen when more intimate contact wasn’t possible; wars started and ended on paper; and the older generations still expect a written thank-you note sent via snail mail. Hell, I stake my livelihood on the power of writing.

The Web allows us to combine the power of the written word with the immediacy of a phone call. Yes, there’s a layer of separation there, but one only has to read a community forum or a blog’s comment thread to see emotion at work in text. Many of these online communities began there, not in the real world, so emotional communication must be possible in text. If anything, there’s too much emotion online. Flame wars can start over nothing — using the wrong emoticon is practically a declaration of war to some people. Immediate access to information is a powerful thing, but the ability to respond immediately — before getting one’s facts in order — has led to a breakdown of communication even worse than the advent of sound-bite news reporting. But that’s just my opinion; I could be wrong. (Apologies to Dennis Miller.) What do you think?

Second item: CodeBaby makes real-time virtual assistants for Web sites. Maybe that’s too simplistic a description, since I didn’t get an extended demo, but it should give you a sense of what the company does. when I saw it, all I could think of was Clippy, the Microsoft Office Assistant. I loathe Clippy, and Office Assistant is among the first things to be permanently disabled on any computer I use. Granted, CodeBabies appear to have a lot more power and versatility than the Clip, but I admit that my first reaction was negative. Since then, I’ve reasoned that CodeBabies could be pretty neat if used in the right way. What do you think, CRM readers? How — if at all — should a company craft a walking, talking Web persona and how should it be used?

BONUS FEATURE! Thanks to the wonder of YouTube, I can provide the source of this post’s title for your listening pleasure. ’80s Brit pop FTW! Spandau Ballet — Communication