"Blending cultures, combining businesses, products and systems, and changing names will take time — two to three years — because we want to do it right for you." So says the first posting by Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf (see photo) on a brand new Web blog started by Wells Fargo to start a conversation about its just-finalized purchase of Wachovia Corp. -- whose bank is the largest in Florida market share.

The blog is called, cleverly, the Wells Fargo-Wachovia Blog. It's an interesting addition to the communication pathways merger partners can employ to tell their stories, air grievances (hopefully) and offer a more human outreach to consumers and customers (who, in turn, can add their 2 cents to the blog). Five Wells-Wachovia bloggers will entertain us, so to speak, for now. Here are more corporate details about the blog, plus today's story from the Charlotte Observer.

Sure, there are plenty of corporate blogs out there but there are not many hyper-focused on the good and bad about a single merger. This blog has potential  -- if Wells-Wachovia can resist filling it with CorporateSpeak and self-serving postings. Of note, most of the official bloggers are younger communications/marketing department folks at the banking company. But along with CEO Stumpf, another is a more seasoned Marianne Babal. She has served as Wells Fargo's "corporate historian" for 12 years after working for the National Park Service.

One Wells blogger, Matt Wadley, in a posting calls the Wells-Wachovia merger kind of like the Brady Bunch -- "two families living together, minus Alice the live-in maid." Hey, as a fellow blogger, I feel his journalistic pain. It's a start.

(Photo courtesy of Well Fargo.)

-- Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist