Big business says it has feelings, too.
And it's willing to join the tech nerds and amateur columnists online to prove it.
Corporations as massive as McDonald's and General Motors are wading into the online "blogosphere" - with employees and even business-suited executives setting up their own weblogs as a way to nurture ties with their tech-savvy customers.
Breezy online diaries - largely the domain of gadget geeks and gossipy wordsmiths - connect with the public in a way that no traditional marketing strategy can, observers say.
"It's remarkable how this is sort of taking off," says Toronto-based technology adviser Stuart MacDonald, who founded Expedia.ca and was the chief marketing director for Expedia.com.
"Obviously it's early days and we're not 100 per cent sure how it's all going to work, but the ability to have a company or a concept made human by virtue of the fact somebody is really talking about it as opposed to just advertising or issuing press releases about it, that seems to be really hitting a positive note with people."
Among the best-known corporate bloggers is Robert Scoble, a Microsoft employee whose weblog Scobleizer includes entries that range from musings on his company's latest hires to the ongoing heartache of watching his mother struggle with the effects of a stroke.
It's all covered by a disclaimer stating that everything he writes is his own opinion and not vetted by his employer. The effect has been phenomenal.
"He will say things that might make Microsoft scream, but by personalizing it and by humanizing Microsoft, and being like, this sort of known guy as opposed to this sort of the evil monolith idea, he's developed a huge following and done a lot to sort of personalize and humanize Microsoft with hundreds of thousands of people," says MacDonald.
Even smaller companies or startups can benefit from an instant boost.
When Toronto-based blogger Tara Hunt moved to California eight months ago to become marketing director for a new photo site, she took her huge online fanbase with her.
It was immediately clear that people were willing to trust a company before they even had any experience with it.
"In the first day we had over a million photos uploaded, which is pretty nuts," says Hunt, who describes her main marketing strategy for Riya.com as building and fostering community, largely through blogs.
"A lot of people interpret corporate blogging as an alternative to press releases or a place that you talk about your company ad nauseum," says Hunt.
"Those kind of corporate blogs don't get a lot of subscribers. They don't really connect to people, they don't create a lot of trust in the community."
Most of what provides fodder for Hunt's playful blog is whatever she finds interesting.
"And because I really love where I work, probably, once a week or once a couple of weeks when we're on a low activity period, I would blog about Riya and what we're doing and talk about (new projects)," says Hunt, former marketing manager for the Human Resources Professionals Association of Ontario.
"But mostly I talk about living in the Valley and ... my crazy life and being a Canadian and my experience."
Not all corporate blogs dare to be so personal.
GM's blog spot (fastlane.gmblogs .com/) features stiff entries from a variety of executives, most often vice-chairman Bob Lutz, that stick to topics revolving around GM vehicles and recent projects that only the most ardent car nut might appreciate.
Still, the fact that such a massive corporation is blogging at all has received attention.
McDonald's, too, has tested the waters with senior director of corporate social responsibility Bob Langert tackling the beefs of a former employee and discussing why the company uses polystyrene coffee cups instead of paper.
In Canada, companies seem to be wary of such a bold strategy.
"Canadian businesses like to have proof in ROI (return on investment), they like to have common business practices. I ran into that a lot working in Canada," says Hunt. "I'm trying to break marketing. I'm trying to make it less about outbound messages and more about building communities."
