We may be a bit slow in posting today, as we're at the Office 2.0 conference to announce our new Techdirt Insight Community. Over the past few years, we've seen an amazing growth in smart, insightful bloggers, who really know their market, and provide great opinions and analysis about a variety of topics on their blogs. At the same time, through our Techdirt Corporate Intelligence service, we've heard about how companies are really looking for good, fast and honest insight and analysis, while also trying to get a better grasp on what the blogosphere has to say about things. However, rather than just monitoring them or bombarding them with press releases, we believe there's an opportunity to bring together the smart bloggers into a community to help provide directed, confidential insight to companies.

Companies sign up to engage the Techdirt Insight Community to raise issues, get feedback, test ideas, review products, make strategy suggestions, help with purchasing decisions or any number of other services that require a dedicated group of experts. We take those issues and alert a group of qualified bloggers, who then can respond within our system. Techdirt analysts then review the responses, and deliver them back to the company. So, rather than setting up a focus group or hiring an expensive analyst firm for their input, companies get a wide variety of perspectives and insights very quickly, and can act on it. The company can also open up the discussion among those bloggers to get second and third-level analysis as they each respond to each other's analysis. In order to focus on honest responses, initially communication uses a double-blind anonymous system, so that people feel they can speak honestly and openly, and companies get the feedback they need to hear. There will, however, be additional opportunities to get like-minded bloggers together on various projects for companies. The service is already in beta testing with a variety of customers and bloggers, and you can see case studies with VeriSign and SAP here. If you are a blogger who regularly blogs about certain industries or technologies, please sign up to be considered for the community. If you represent a company that wants to get the perspectives of a group of very smart bloggers, please contact us to see about joining our beta program. Or you can just read more at the Techdirt Insight Community website.