There was a time not long ago, when if a $60B company that happened to be the (or one of the) largest PC manufacturers in the world started blogging, Jeff Jarvis, Steve Rubel, and Robert Scoble would have had to excuse themselves to go get fresh linens. But when Dell started blogging yesterday, our boys wasted no time in throwing tomatoes and heaping on the criticism.

Let me first say for the record that I’m a huge fan of Jarvis, respect the effort and enthusiasm of Rubel, and am not the biggest Scoble fan in the world but do think he’s made a positive contribution to the evolution of blogging. That said, I think the three of them, at least initially, all acted poorly on this issue.

The history, for those who don’t know, is that Jarvis wrote about his own personal problems with Dell in a series of posts which are rightly legendary for showing how individual users now have power in the marketing conversation of even the largest brands. Jarvis is a great writer, lucid, and deeply understands the important shift blogging is causing in the communication dynamics - and in large part used what he called ‘Dell Hell’ to teach everyone how it works.

Dell publicly ignored the issue while Jarvis’ posts made it to Business Week, top spots in Google and gained meaningful visibility all over the place. Part of the education Jarvis had provided, however, was invitations and recommendations for Dell to join the conversation.

This week they did. And in 24-48 hours the three largest proselytizers of business blogging had summarily dismissed Dell’s efforts as being ‘a blog in content management system name only’, as ‘failing to get the blog going the way that they could have’ and admonishing them to ‘Listen. Listen. Listen’ (ie don’t talk).

The problem of course, which these three know better than anyone, is that blogging is new, takes time, is risky, and the complexity of Dell’s world (which does extend past the issues of their critics) cannot be covered or explained in a day. As many later voices have chimed in, including it appears Scoble and Rubel (Jarvis refuted the calls for mercy), Dell should be commended for jumping in and given time (and encouragement) to find the right tone and balance in the conversation.

There are hundreds of thousands of companies who don't yet understand why they would want to blog. The fear of 'attacks by mobs of lunatics' is probably the largest inhibitor of blogging growth beyond sheer ignorance. Dell is widely known to be in a tough spot in terms of consumer issues, and as such their brave entry into the blogosphere will be publicized and analyzed widely. It's too bad that the actions of these three important bloggers will, in this case, help re-affirm to many that not blogging is the right thing to do.

Update: Of course The Head Lemur did a better job saying what I meant.