When we launched BransonBlog last year, the reaction from most people was one of amusement and oh-how-cute pat-you-on-the-head-ed-ness (yeah, I know, not a word). The assumption, of course, was that BransonBlog was just a Richard Branson fan blog, celebrating the most entrepreneurial hot-air balloonist ever and rambling incessantly and only glowingly about his many achievements. In the past few months, though, at least five people have instead asked a better question: Is BransonBlog a brand blog or a fan blog? It’s something we’ve been thinking about quite a lot lately, the biggest question as we rethink and redesign this site.

BransonBlog was originally intended to be a brand blog covering Richard Branson’s ventures. We wanted to follow the news about companies administered by Branson, to consider his marketing strategies and recognize his attack patterns when invading new industries. There’s a subtle (and, many would say, pedantic) difference between BransonBlog and other Virgin brand blogs, in that we care about Richard Branson’s companies, not necessarily companies carrying the Virgin name. The reasoning is simple— if you’re trying to find patterns in the strategies of a specific business leader, the moves of Virgin Radio (no longer owned by Branson) are pretty irrelevant and only add confusing data points.  

Along the way, we’ve been sidetracked by distractions— how best to build an online community, what technology features to add, how to channel the amount of Branson fan-mail we get each week, etc.— and hadn’t quite found our voice yet. We’ve even considered a few ideas that would affiliate us more closely with Virgin Group, but couldn’t find the right balance to avoid becoming a PR aggregator for them either. From the earliest discussions to build this site, we’d really hoped to write analytically about Branson strategies in a bigger-picture sense… That is, not just whether Virgin Mobile will go public this year, but also whether Branson’s hybrid model trying to reconcile Japanese keiretsu with modern profit-focus is viable over the long term. Yeah. That. This should be a site that Branson fans follow for our thorough coverage, but that entrepreneurs and MBA students everywhere can learn serious lessons from too.

We’d already been thinking quite a bit about these questions and the real focus of BransonBlog, and today’s New York Times piece on brand blogs reminded us of another site with similar focus…

Jim Romenesko, who runs a well-known Web site about the media, maintains a separate blog about Starbucks, starbucksgossip.typepad.com. He said most of his 3,000 to 5,000 daily visitors found his blog through a Google search for Starbucks.

The blog’s readers are a combination of Starbucks fans, detractors and employees. They use the site as a lively forum to discuss issues like whether Manhattan should have a store on each block, the joys of Starbucks drive-through locations, and the good and bad habits of Starbucks customers and workers. When Mr. Romenesko, of Evanston, Ill., wondered why so many of the stores were offering free samples of a green tea drink, his readers filled him in on a company-sponsored competition for trips to Japan.

If they can build an entire site dedicated to coffee, it should be even easier to create a site about airlines, music stores, mobile phones, and the 300+ other offerings from the mind of Richard Branson. And hopefully we’ll all learn a few things in the process. Stay tuned for all the fun…