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Motivations for Corporate Blogging

Posted by samzenpus on Thu May 26, 2005 07:07 AM
from the blog-for-business dept.
Businesses IT
ringfinger writes "Ross Mayfield just posted an interesting blog essay entitled Fear, Greed and Social Software that examines the motivations (Fear and Greed) for corporate blogging. How many slashdotters blog for their companies? Do their companies fear that they might say something embarrasing? Or are they filled with greed for the additional exposure it generates?"
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  • a few thoughts... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by professorhojo (686761) * on Thursday May 26 2005, @07:08AM (#12643358)
    Just a few thoughts...

    As a corporate marketing tactic, in my (limited) experience, it only works only if the blog author has talent.

    You need someone on your team who can write in a genuinely engaging voice, who can be intimate without telling you what he or she had for breakfast, and who knows the line between openness and damaging innuendo.

    Also: blogging's strength is of course, ultimately, its biggest weakness when you view it from a corporation's point of view. You can budget and plan for it, but you can't forecast the results, which is enough to make the suits very nervous.

    • Re:a few thoughts... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Eric Giguere (42863) on Thursday May 26 2005, @07:21AM (#12643429) Homepage Journal

      but you can't forecast the results

      But that's true about most marketing initiatives. What makes them nervous is that the posters aren't having their material vetted (like press releases and so on) through the usual corporate processes.

      Eric
      My new AdSense book [memwg.com] will be out mid-June
      • The way to be successful is to be flexible. You have to create your own job and your own situation and the blogs can either be something which help you do this or help someone else depending on how good you are at using the tool.

        Blogs are marketing, but not always positive marketing. Annonymous blogs also make it impossible to track where it comes from, so how is this useful? For the worker it allows you to know which places you don't want to work for and which bosses you don't want to be under. It's a goo

    • Re:a few thoughts... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ajdavis (11891) on Thursday May 26 2005, @08:13AM (#12643759) Homepage
      First of all, I resent the vaguely cultural-studies post-structuralist jargon of the article: "Here the heterarchy transcends the firewall and pressure can be applied from without." What's a heterarchy? Is that firewall a metaphorical one? I, for one, do NOT welcome our Foucault-reading post-modern academic overlords.

      As for corporate blogging, the most useful blogs I've come across are from important developers in Microsoft (in particular) & also Google, Netscape, Python, etc. A number of times I've been investigating a fairly obscure question about some Microsoft API (shut up, it's my job), & found an excellent answer in a Microsoftie's blog. E.g., some feature seems blatantly missing, I'm searching for it, & the developer mentions in his blog that the feature IS indeed missing but he hopes to implement it in version 3.

      This has nothing to do with marketing. I'm not sure what you'd call it in suitspeak, but it's sort of a conversational style of customer support & community-building.
      • Heterarchy [weblogs.com] is a term from social network analysis

        Heterarchies represent a new logic of organizing that is neither market nor hierarchy: whereas hierarchies involve relations of dependence and markets involve relations of independence, heterarchies involve relations of interdependence. As the term suggests, heterarchies are characterized by minimal hierarchy and by organizational heterogeneity, a pair of concepts elaborated below.

        By firewall, it means use of social software inside the organization.

    • Many pawns with increased communication simply means the suits need to actually work just as hard as everyone else now. Why? Because now the social mobility is increased. What stops you from influencing the corporation from the grassroots?

      Blogging is a strength, so is the internet, but all of this power existed before in other forms so its not really new. The difference now is the fact that the power is distributed to anyone when before it was kept within certain circles of networks of peers.

      If a network

  • Bloggin' for the Man (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lheal (86013) <lheal1999@NospaM.yahoo.com> on Thursday May 26 2005, @07:16AM (#12643403) Homepage Journal
    >How many Slashdotters blog for their companies?

    (Uh, I would, but I'm too busy on Slashdot. )

    Why is it bad ("greedy") for a company to have employees pretend to expound on their personal opinions in the form of a blog?

    Asked and answered. Official personal corporate blogs are too much like astroturfing.
    • You can smell them a mile away.

      Atroturfer blogger:

      Well, we've got this new product in dev., its going to be sooo cool, bhah blah blah, I just had to let you in on some of the advanced features blah blah blah

      Real-life

      The fucking morons where I work REALLY nead to get a clue. The stooopid lazy bastards ... I swear, their vcr is stuck at 12:00, they can't make change for a $20 without using a calculator, but put them in front of a PC and they're suddenly smart? Fuck them, they want to open attachments

      • "too much like astroturfing" I think you misread the GP. It doesn't say "personal corporate blogs are astroturfing", but just that they are too much like it. They show artificial "grass roots" support from inside the company, so no, it's not the same thing, but it's not quite a misapplication of the term, either.

  • Personal blogging... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NineNine (235196) on Thursday May 26 2005, @07:19AM (#12643414) Homepage
    And I have always thought that personal blogging is a result of extreme self-centeredness. Blogging is the ultimate vanity... a public diary about "me" that the rest of the worls is just *dying* to read. I mean, really... who wouldn't want to know what I had for breakfast this morning?
    • Blogging is the ultimate vanity... a public diary about "me" that the rest of the worls is just *dying* to read. I mean, really... who wouldn't want to know what I had for breakfast this morning?

      Yeah yeah, but what about your ongoing internal struggle about choosing which different wattages of lightbulbs to buy?
      • Yeah yeah, but what about your ongoing internal struggle about choosing which different wattages of lightbulbs to buy?

        You're absolutely right... the world needs to know! I am *that* important, that the rest of the planet is hanging on my every word. Now, let me tell everybody about my last trip to the bathroom...

    • Re:Personal blogging... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Totally agree.

      And what gets me are the bloggers who feel they are part of some kind of revolution.

      Blogs are simply online diaries that have become popular because the simple fact is people like getting attention.
    • Maybe if you're an angsty teen. My blog is almost entirely weird/interesting things that I think my friends might be interested in reading about. And ranting. Nothing beats a good rant for reducing stress.
    • Well, that certainly describes some blogs. But my wife, for instance, uses hers to keep in touch with friends from all over the country. It's a cheap, easy way to stay in contact and communicate with them all at the same time. All blogs aren't really for all the public.
    • When you get down to it, all personal writing requires some degree of self-importance. Anyone who posts here on /., myself included, presumes that his or her opinion is interesting enough that others will want to read it. The only difference between us and Dave Barry, for example, is that Dave is actually correct in that presumption. Most bloggers fall in the realm of the /. poster, but a few succeed in being interesting, informative, relevant, and/or entertaining.

  • corporate 'greed' (Score:5, Informative)

    by mark_jabroni (547666) on Thursday May 26 2005, @07:22AM (#12643434)
    Corporate officers try to make profits for their companies because that's what corporate officers are supposed to do. Shareholders (usually including employees) have invested large sums of money into the company, in return for which they expect profits.

    Interestingly, a brit pop star recently said that the real evil is 'shareholders'. That would be great, except that in non-socialist countries there's no good way to retire without being a shareholder at some point or another.


    • > That would be great, except that in non-socialist countries there's no good way to retire without being a shareholder at some point or another.

      The same thing happens in socialist countries where everything belong to "the people".

      > Interestingly, a brit pop star recently said that the real evil is 'shareholders'.

      Which is why socialist societies are evil by definition :-)
        • You know how socialism began? One of the first early movements in 19th century came from the rich, bored kids of burgoisie, who one day realized that plenty of kinds under twelve years of age were working on mines, and they decided to do something about it. Marx was part of that, though he was - a bit like Emerson - more of a thinker than doer. Anyway, they succeeded and a law was passed in England that prohibited childre nunder twelve from being employed (not sure about the extent of that law, i.e. if it o
    • Corporate officers try to make profits for their companies because that's what corporate officers are supposed to do.

      Correction; you think that's what corporate officers are supposed to do.

      Some of us actually hold the radical and crazy opinion that a company should make decisions based jointly on their own need and the needs of society. If a new chemical was discovered to be extremely polluting, yet slightly cheaper than the alternative and not yet covered by emmision controls, would you be comfortable

      • This is also a somewhat flaky definition.

        I'm might be considered a passive shareholder through my 401(k) holdings, but I can assure you that JP Morgan is probably pretty active on my behalf.

        And of course i expect to see decent returns on my 401(k), which puts pressure on them to have companies run profitably.
        • IIRC, there have been cases of shareholders sueing companies for not returning enough on their investment. A company taking the "ethical" route rather than the "profitable" route can be liable not just to its shareholders selling up/voting out the board, but also for legal action.

          That sounds absolutly ridicilous. If a controlling majority is for a non-profit route (else they'd just switch out the leadership) why in heaven should the courts interfere?

        • No, that's what corporate officers are supposed to do.

          Says who? So far I've counted you and grand-parent, if you keep on like this you can start a petetion!

          It could be that the shareholders really just want a short term profit, and if so, the company isn't likely to last too long.

          So basically, you don't see anything wrong with a company causing massive long-term damage as long as it's what the shareholders want? It's the rest of the world that has to live with the consequenses..

          • Says who? So far I've counted you and grand-parent, if you keep on like this you can start a petetion!

            Well, the whole point of a corporation is to make a profit. The duty of a corporate officer is to run the corporation. Therefore, a corporate officer tries to make profits.

            So basically, you don't see anything wrong with a company causing massive long-term damage as long as it's what the shareholders want? It's the rest of the world that has to live with the consequenses..

            I'm having trouble findi

        • No, that's what corporate officers are supposed to do. You may not like that, but that's the whole point of being a corporate officer.
          When the company tells a corporate officer to break the law for profit, they should be held responsible. They should get jail time if they poison people, even if it would up their stock price.

          The company doesn't get sole say in how they act.
        • I'm interested in your retirement story

          Goverment pension funds are more than adequate here in Norway, and as far as I can tell the same holds for most of Europe.

          Granted alot the money I have to pay to it will ultimatly be placed in stocks, but the fund has extremely strict ethical rules (basically, don't invest in anything anybody finds controversial (which for contrast, does not rule out abortion but does rule out most military stocks)), and they are required by law to be passive owners (ie; don't vo

  • Will blog for food (Score:3, Funny)

    by Timesprout (579035) on Thursday May 26 2005, @07:27AM (#12643453)
    and a nice cardboard box to sleep in.

  • It's not an "either/or" question (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MichPOSDude (681182) on Thursday May 26 2005, @07:29AM (#12643460)
    I'd say those aren't the only two scenarios for corporate blogging. But I maintain this is a bit of a fad, anuway. At least in publicly held companies in the US, this isn't going to fly for long, if at all. Sure, there will be some exceptions, but there are issues here. This requires a company willing to give up control of its corporate voice, and that just ain't going to happen without a lot of preconditions. Conditions such as censoring the blogs, "training" the bloggers in what can be disclosed and what can't, legal review, etc. I think both the bloggers and the companies allowing it are going to pull back on the reins before this ever really takes off, because corporate America is just not this democratic. The first time a company is held liable for the misstatements of a corporate blogger, or for the public's misunderstanding of a blogger's seemingly innocent remarks, the party's over.

  • greed first (Score:3, Insightful)

    by alexandreracine (859693) <alexandreracine@gmail.com> on Thursday May 26 2005, @07:30AM (#12643468) Homepage Journal
    Do their companies fear that they might say something embarrasing? Or are they filled with greed for the additional exposure it generates?"
    Usually it is greed first and then if there is something embarrasing, they will delete it. Is there others thinking the same thing?

  • My blog (Score:5, Funny)

    by mrselfdestrukt (149193) <nollie_A7_firstcounsel_com> on Thursday May 26 2005, @07:31AM (#12643471) Homepage Journal
    Hello. Today is stardate 26-05-2005

    I work for a large company. We are greedy, we steal and we overprice our products.
    Today I had meetings about how we can enter other markets by utilizing our evil techniques.
    I also tried to get a gmail account, but my name was already taken.
    Tomorrow I will think of a new way to charge customers for all the security holes in our software. An antivirus combined with spyware-removal tool updated daily by my company maybe? hmm. I like that. I hope nobody reads these blogs. That's all for today

    William Gates.

    PS: I hate this FSCKING "confirm your not a script"!
    • Hello. Today is stardate 26-05-2005

      I work for a large company. We are greedy, we steal and we overprice our products......

      Nothing wrong with that! I quote:
      Rule of acquisition No.1 - Once you have their money, you never give it back.

      William Gates.

      What a coincidence! You have a William Gates on Ferenginar too?

  • IBM encourages company blogging (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 26 2005, @07:40AM (#12643511)
    There have been several new blog efforts at IBM recently.

    1. They provide internal blogs to everyone. Anyone within the company can view any employees blog. Confidential material relating to specific works in development to you are not permitted though as the controls on the blogs are rather weak. But still, there are blogs from both personal and professional topics hosted internally.

    2. Recently guidelines for public blogging were released. They were rather straightforward and obvious in the following tone:
    - Post freely, be helpful, seek help
    - Don't post trade secrets, use best judgement
    - Don't engage in online arguments, once again, be helpful

    It appears they would have us out there talking about anything and all things, including company products, helping others with our products, etc.

    Of course, it's written with perspective of "help the greater good, don't make us look bad", but I still think it's a great step forward and a proactive approach to forwarding the community.

    Here's my last required gem:

    These are my opinions and not those of IBM.
    • >These are my opinions and not those of IBM.

      Actually, the disclaimer goes like this:

      "The postings on this site/posting are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions."

      Meaning what you just said might or might not be the company's position.

      Example.. If I made a comment that would include the term "Free as in Free from Microsoft", it would not necessarily reflect my employer's point of view.
      • It describes another brand of astroturfers, right?

        We can also draw a parallel between those "culture evangelists" and what is happening with asia right now.
        To win business in a country, it's easier if you hire people there beforehand. you're already seen as a good guy creating local work. And those new employees are bound to "spread the word" about their employer to their peers.

  • One of the reasons that I pretty much never read corporate blogs like Schwartz's is that they are usually just launching pads. Some of the Microsoft employee ones are kinda interesting because you get to see a little bit of what goes on with the development of IE and stuff like that. Yet I don't know anyone who really takes Schwartz seriously at all except for a few entries I have seen on the copyright expansionist blog IPCentral [ipcentral.info].

    I think it is only a matter of time before the bigger corporate bloggers screw up and get censored or fired for being too honest. What would happent to an IE developer that grudgingly admits that they're making CSS2.1 and 3.0 support top priority for 7.0 because Firefox's CSS support is better right now? They'd probably be fired. The same goes for a Sun developer who says that Apache's Harmony project may be what saves Java from being destroyed by .NET.

    There is one thing that all of the elitists who post here saying how worthless blogging is ultimately fail to comprehend. Blogging gives the average citizen a stake in online free speech. It makes censorship actually hit home and does anyone honestly think that the average blogger is going to vote for a candidate that supported a measure that directly censored them? A lot are already jumping ship from the GOP because of Bush's uncritical support for McCain-Feingold. Sadly, blogging may be the last, best hope for restoring a drive for liberty in this country post-9/11 and the elitist nerds here and elsewhere should accept that and embrace it. So what if someone's blog is asinine, don't read it. Problem solved. Ironically I have seen few blog posts as utterly asinine as 90% of what gets posted by Anonymous Cowards here.

    • FWIW, I'm also repulsed by McCain-Feingold, and agree that the average Joe needs a better understanding of how communicating online does (and spectacularly does not, sometimes) contribute to our wider cultural discourse. That being said, the topic here is corporate blogging. Censorship, per se, isn't an issue. Forget the web, blogs, the net. 20 years ago, people working for publicly held (hey, private, too) companies were always told to refer press inquiries to the people in the organization that were train

  • Getting fired (Score:3, Informative)

    by pthor1231 (885423) on Thursday May 26 2005, @07:48AM (#12643549)
    In TFA:
    "Nobody gets fired for blogging"

    If you search on google [google.com], it is pretty easy to see that someone has been fired over blogging already. Its actually a fairly serious issue, one we spent time discussing in my ethics class. Granted the firing may have been over the content he posted, but he was fired because of the blog.

    • Its not a fairly serious issue, employees (in the case you link the moron was a contractor who clearly didnt realise one of the features of contracting is that you can be fired on a whim) have been fired for doing stupid things since the concept of a company was developed, the only difference with blogging is the stupidity is made available for all to see.
    • It's not the medium that gets people fired; it's the content.

      When people misrepresent their company, they get canned.

      Doesn't matter if they do it in a blog.
      Doesn't matter if they do it with a frog.
      Doesn't matter if they do it in a book.
      Companies only care how they look.
  • I read Macromedia's blogs religiously because I find 'em very interesting. It helps me build a personal, emotional connection to software. The guys behind the software are real people with ideas and struggles just like me, and that gives me warm and fuzzy feelings.

    Why would any company not want to establish personal, emotional connections to their software?

    Yeah, sure, there's risks involved if your employees reveal corporate secrets or turbulence, but if you trust them enough with your source code, why would you think they wouldn't be smart enough to walk the line with blogs as well? If you don't trust your employees enough to blog, it doesn't say anything about your employees - it says something about your paranoia and your inability to hire reliable staff.

    (And yes, I have a personal blog, and no, I'm not allowed to talk about company stuff in it, and yes, I've been disciplined for even coming close to the line.)
  • BusinessWeek ran an article on blogging called "Blogs Will Change Your Business" in the May 2 issue. The article is written in the form of a blog, and the main idea is that no business can afford to ignore blogs. My opinion when I read it was that the article was a little heavy on hype, but for a businessman who knows nothing about blogs it's probably a good introduction. In any case, the article also announced that BusinessWeek was starting its own blog, called Blogspotting [businessweek.com], to continue to follow blogs as

  • Internal Opposition... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by johnhennessy (94737) on Thursday May 26 2005, @08:29AM (#12643893)
    Blogging (truthfully) about something your company is doing might go completely against what a lot of people in the company are hired to hide.

    Accountants, marketing and HR are all responsible for bending the truth in such a way to put a positive spin on something that might not be so rosey.

    A prime example is Paul Otellini's (Intels CEO) interal blog which has been leaked at least once. I can't find the link to the original article where I read about it (help appreciated) which stated that he quite openly admitted that they had a lot of work to do to catch up with AMDs Opteron architecture.

    If you are to take a step back and think about it, he's openness makes perfect sense to anyone who's been following processor trends for more than a year or so. The only problem is the accountants and marketing folks are trying to tell the opposite story - "AMD, no, ours is better".

    I personally would prefer to hear my leader tell the truth and not simply try to keep the stock market happy. The only reason why the stock market gets upset by comments like this is because they aren't said often enough.
  • I read a lot of "corporate" blogs, and I think it's pretty easy to spot the ones that understand blogging, those that are chasing the bandwagon. Blogs are a really effective tool for sharing business expertise in a way that builds relationships with potential customers and partners. They work well because they're different from the tired old approaches to sales/marketing communications. The key is to talk about your industry using an authentic voice rather than marketing-speak. Some enlightened companies a

  • Corporate blogging. Why? Read the Cluetrain manifesto [cluetrain.org] and it will make an awful lot of sense. Corporate blogs are ways to create communities.

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