Marketers are wising up to blogs as a decent market gauge for products and services, even product conception, informs the Wall Street Journal's William Bulkeley. He writes about efforts by U.S. Cellular to come up with a solution for teens' concerns over having their cellular minutes used up, and the methods that companies in a newfound industry of blogwatching are using to determine demographic information about blog authors. It's no surprise that there would be commercialization of such a measure - it's a no brainer. The popularity of blogs and their "open-ness," that is to say the ability for almost anyone with a browser and some free time to visit them, are a unique happening that didn't exist at this scale - like, ever.
