In the case that customers can not go to a firm's store because of any reasons (for example, they have to work at the opening time of the store and they are just free at the closing time), they can post description of their adversities to the firm's blog and get the solution in the next day. Furthermore, external blogs can be utilized in keeping contact or inform companies' news to customers. “Corporate blogs can convey information from employees and management to company audiences” (Joshua LC et al., 2008, p.5). Companies prefer to post their sales or promotion policy on their blogs rather than their homepages because while their formal websites have to follow strict rules, the information in their blogs is more flexible so their new policies are easier to be seen by customers. In fact, several authors have concerned about this thing. In their research, Lee, Hwang and Lee (2006) has though that “It is highly doubtful whether they have fully utilized the capabilities of those new faces as a two-way communication tool because most corporate home pages have been primarily used as a platform to push mundane advertising messages”.
In addition, companies also prefer blogs because blogs have proved to be extremely useful marketing tools. In fact, people are willing to believe information from popular blogs or websites of pundits rather than formal websites of companies because customers always have an assumption in their mind that information from formal sites have been manipulated by advertising experts so they can not be trusted completely (Wilson, 2005). In reality, blogs have been used by several large firms because of mentioned advantages. Bentley has made use of this function several years ago. At Bentley Community Blogs[1], members can discuss, update information and gain some tips about Bentley's products such as Continental GT Speed coupé or Bentley Continental Flying Spur... Others British firms also adapted blogs as a kind of communicating with customer ranging from British Telecommunications[2] to Guinness beer[3].
Thirdly, turning to telepresence or videoconferencing, arranging meeting between colleagues or between head offices and divisions in multinational companies is always a big issue for firms, especially for organizations that have divisions around the world or organizations that began to develop groups and team with the aims of having better decisions, increasing productivity.... Indeed, the costs of travelling, hiring places... are not cheap for these companies. “business travel will reach $110 billion, up from $103 billion last year” in US (Nyberg, 2001) while “Business trip cost to rise 5%” in UK (Frary, 2008). Moreover, according to a survey conducted Tandberg, a global leader in visual communication, 600000 travelers surveyed (or 19%) (Tandberg, 2006) in UK admitted that business travel make them less productive. Because of these issues, the subject of videoconferencing has been concerned and adapted within many organizations. In the UK, nine out of ten companies are using some form of virtual collaboration to enhance the quality of their work (Financial Times, 2008). These companies range from telecommunication companies like BT to law-specialized companies like Clifford Chance. While BT
