"BRAND BLOGS CAPTURE THE ATTENTION OF SOME COMPANIES"

Good drumbeat for GoingOn...

Michael Marx loves Barq's root beer. He frequently wears a Barq's T-shirt. He brings Barq's root beer to parties.

So it should come as no surprise that Mr. Marx, 34, of Gilbert, Ariz., keeps a blog dedicated to Barq's.

"I've been drinking Barq's for 15 years. It's my beer," said Mr. Marx, who started his blog, thebarqsman.com, last year to collect news about Barq's, commercials he likes for the drink and musings on why he thinks Barq's is the best.

As the number of blogs has grown, more consumers like Mr. Marx are keeping Web diaries dedicated exclusively to their favorite brands. Most of them are written without the consent of the companies that own the brands; a spokesman for Coca-Cola, which owns Barq's, had not heard of Mr. Marx's blog.

But some companies are starting to pay attention to blogs, using them as a kind of informal network of consumer opinion.

"In addition to viewing blogs as another media channel, it allows us to keep our pulse on the marketplace," said Ken Ross, a vice president of Netflix, the movie rental company based in Los Gatos, Calif. One of the best-known blogs about Netflix, hackingnetflix.com, was started last November by Mike Kaltschnee, who lives in Danbury, Conn.

"I post anything I find interesting, and it turns out 100,000 people a month find it interesting, too," said Mr. Kaltschnee. He also started a blog about Trader Joe's, the specialty grocery chain based in Monrovia, Calif., at trackingtraderjoes.com. (full article)