Institute For The Future

Personal corporate blogging

Technology Review's Wade Roush has a short article about employee blogging that offers an interesting data-point on the growth of corporate-approved (if not directly sponsored) blogging.

I think it's safe to say that many companies are still trying to figure out what in the world they're supposed to do with blogs. My sense, from talking to some clients and gathering what I admit is completely anecdotal evidence, is that there's a split reaction to blogs as a communications technology and medium, and blogs as a cultural phenomenon. Inasmuch as blogs bear some resemblance to intranets or KM, they're seen as potentially useful; but the blogosphere is much harder to control, and to be entered with great care.

So some companies have internal blogs, while others have a mix of internal and external ones. (The latter is the Institute's model. We have Future Now; an internal, employees-only blog; and program-related blogs for clients.) But the free-for-all character of blogging is still threatening. Or, as a recent Money/CNN article put it,

 

On the one hand, corporate managers recognize the power of word-of-mouth as a sales tool. On the other hand, they're acutely aware of the dangers inherent in the rapid and widespread dissemination of company information.

 

Also muddying the waters are a small but well-publicized number of cases of employees being fired for blogging about work. Indeed, according to one article, getting fired for things you write on your blog "is happening enough that there is even a word for it -- getting 'dooced.' Blogger Heather B. Armstrong coined the phrase in 2002, after she was fired from her Web design job for writing about work and colleagues on her blog, Dooce.com." Certainly it's gotten lots of press: a Google search on the exact phrase "fired for blogging" returns over 50,000 hits. (IFTF friend danah boyd worries that these stories will only hurt blogging's public image. Likewise, Anil Dash thinks that the fact that "a loud, obnoxious minority of bloggers have decided they want their grandmothers to think of blogging as 'that thing that gets journalists fired'" have been joined by "a loud, obnoxious minority of bloggers have decided they want their grandmothers to think that blogging is 'that thing that gets regular people fired'".

But as Roush notes, there are at least a few companies who are embracing blogs wholeheartedly:

 

Many dot-com nostrums are best forgotten, but the idea that honest, unfiltered conversation between companies and customers might actually be good for business lives on—and, in fact, is being embraced by dozens of large firms, from Microsoft to Maytag. To the degree that open conversation does happen, it’s happening largely through weblogs, or blogs....

Most companies are still cautious when it comes to communicating with mainstream media outlets; employees are seldom allowed to speak with journalists without media-relations chaperones. But blogs have emerged as an exception, with more and more companies concluding that the public-relations benefits outweigh the risks. One of those companies is Sun Microsystems, which promotes employee blogging more aggressively than any other technology firm. "Sun’s employees are our most passionate evangelists," says Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s president and chief operating officer and the author of a company blog read by tens of thousands of visitors every month. "From where I sit, the more our investors and customers know about us, the better."

Sun’s Simon Phipps, whose job title is chief technology evangelist, says that researchers and developers can swap more ideas, build better software, and meet customers’ needs faster if they are active in online communities, where blogs play the dual role of soap- and suggestion-box. "In a world where you must speak with an authentic voice," says Phipps, "the obvious way is to let the people you most trust—your employees—speak directly to the -people you most want to appeal to—your customers."...

Companies with top-down management cultures and controls on the flow of information probably aren’t ready for the era of employee blogging. Nor is their reluctance likely to hurt them, if they have a locked-in base of customers.... But consumer-oriented companies that abjure the blogosphere are missing out on opportunities to generate buzz, monitor customer concerns, and—perhaps most importantly—show their human side.

 

A couple notes on this.

First, one might argue that Sun has nothing to lose. However, MSNBC reports that Microsoft "encourages blogging and has more than 1,500 unofficial bloggers — the bulk on Microsoft's official Web sites."

Second, Sun has articulated guidelines regarding employee blogging. They're largely common sense, a reminder that the same cautions you'd keep in mind about trade secrets and sensitive financial information apply in blogs. Past that, Tim Bray recommends that you "be interesting," "write what you know," and "think about consequences"-- rules that any blogger should follow, no matter the topic. (Interestingly, these resonate with some guidelines I came up with after thinking about the similarities between bloggers and Victorian amateur scientists.)

Finally, it strikes me that what Sun is doing resonates with the strategic marketing ideas that have been part of the Valley for the last twenty or so years. People like Geoffrey Moore and Regis McKenna have been talking for decades about the key role that reputation, word-of-mouth, and industry influencers have on high tech purchasing decisions. Sun's encouraging its employees to blog-- and in particular, to blog about what they know best and use the medium as a way to talk and listen to customers-- is right in this tradition.