Motivations for Corporate Blogging 115
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?"
a few thoughts... (Score:5, Insightful)
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:1)
Re:a few thoughts... (Score:1)
I'm one of them! Dude, I can hardly read the letters while sober. Try staring at a monitor for 16 hours a day with fucked-up contacts.
The agony!!!
Re:a few thoughts... (Score:2)
I guess someone named Hulkster might be able to do that as a "Big Green Monster" ... but even The HULK can get a hangover and not feel so good the next morning ... ;-) [blogspot.com]
Re:a few thoughts... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
EricMy new AdSense book [memwg.com] will be out mid-June
Maybe, but in general (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Comedy, not tragedy? (Score:1, Funny)
Hi,
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Fantastic news though, PoliticoBot approved our purchase of all the radio station, so everything you see, hear and read will now be produced by NoNewsHereCorp.
I of course, will be having cheese at my lunchbreak (which is now) so blog to you later happy joy NNHC readers!
Re:a few thoughts... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:a few thoughts... (Score:1)
Re:a few thoughts... (Score:2, Interesting)
By firewall, it means use of social software inside the organization.
Re:a few thoughts... (Score:2)
Hm. I was going to comment on TFA by asking:
Yours was much better. Thank you.
Re:a few thoughts... (Score:2)
Heh, I was starting to think I was the problem, since I was having trouble following the posts here too. Thankfully, I'm not. :)
I'll move on, since I don't speak corporatespeak after all. I thought I did, it looks like English, but I guess I don't.
This is why you become a suit using the blogs. (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Re:a few thoughts... (Score:1)
Speaking of blogging talent:
This guy could use some -- and maybe a lesson in grammar while he's at it.
Bloggin' for the Man (Score:3, Insightful)
(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.
Re:Bloggin' for the Man (Score:2, Funny)
Atroturfer blogger:
Real-life
At the same time (Score:1)
Re:Bloggin' for the Man (Score:2)
Personal blogging... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Personal blogging... (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah yeah, but what about your ongoing internal struggle about choosing which different wattages of lightbulbs to buy?
Re:Personal blogging... (Score:2, Funny)
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)
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.
Re:Personal blogging... (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. And the fact is that virtually nobody outside of the "blogging community" even knows what a "blog" is. So the "community" ends up being a bunch of people patting themselves on the back.
Re:Personal blogging... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Personal blogging... (Score:1, Funny)
You mean like this thread?
Re:Personal blogging... (Score:1)
For those of you who have forgotten, Slashdot is a blog. So is MetaFilter. So is boingboing.
Re:Personal blogging... (Score:2)
Re:Personal blogging... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:OH NO (Score:1)
Re:Personal blogging... (Score:2)
corporate 'greed' (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:corporate 'greed' (Score:2)
> 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
If you want to retire (Score:1)
It's better to use motion against itself than to fight the current.
Instead of being a socialist, start your own business, make as much money as you can, and buy a bunch of companies like George Soros and Warren Buffet. Then you can promote socialism through capitalism, but you arent going to get anywhere if you are going to just yell and scream at people to pay higher taxes, and you
Re:If you want to retire (Score:2)
Re:If you want to retire (Score:2)
Re:If you want to retire (Score:1)
Actually, this sort of argument has been used everytime someone has tried to make working conditions better. One example is the decrease in the work week. The work week was something like 85 hours
Re:If you want to retire (Score:2)
Oy. At least, the groupthink didn't yet mod the parent drivel up.
Go learn a bit about how the capital markets work.
Shareholders provide money which is used to pay for the PROCESS of creating wealth. Y'know, the salaries of people who work, and the tools they use to do their work. Oh, and BTW, your grandmother who has a pension plan -
Re:corporate 'greed' (Score:2)
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
Re:corporate 'greed' (Score:1)
Re:corporate 'greed' (Score:2)
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..
Re:corporate 'greed' (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
I'm having trouble findi
Re:corporate 'greed' (Score:2)
Well, it's a direct inference from your statements.
Just because something is bad long-term for a community doesn't necessarily mean it's bad for the company. While the 'bad publicity' argument you're basically using holds most of the time, it won't hold always. Sometimes there just ain't any negative side-effects to being the bad boy. I'll try to make an example:
Re:corporate 'greed' (Score:2)
I fail to see how that's different from society in general and its individual members.
Humans, for most part, are selfish pigs (they are finely tuned biological machines designed for that), and by and large can't think lo
Re:corporate 'greed' (Score:2)
Did YOU ever drive while drunk?
No, of course not, that would be bloody stupid (and pointless).
The rest of the world ain't as car-obsessed as you guys you know.
Re:corporate 'greed' (Score:2)
Just for reference, I'm about as much from being "car-obsessed" as you can get - namely, I don't own a car (never had) and haven't driven one in about 4 years. Next criticism?
Re:corporate 'greed' (Score:2)
I was merely pointing out that it failed, as I don't drunk-drive, nor do I know anybody who have drunk-driven. I haven't even heard any stories of friends of friends who have drunk-driven.
Regard the 'car-obsessed'; Regardless of your personal opinion, fact remains; its far more common for young people to have cars in the US compared to any other place. By referring to 'you guys' I was of course usen the extremely broad meaning of 'you',
Re:corporate 'greed' (Score:2)
The company doesn't get sole say in how they act.
Active Shareholder (Score:2)
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.
Re:corporate 'greed' (Score:1)
Re:corporate 'greed' (Score:2)
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?
Re:corporate 'greed' (Score:2, Funny)
Re:corporate 'greed' (Score:1)
It all started out the other w
Re:corporate 'greed' (Score:2)
Wow.. that's fucked up
Re:corporate 'greed' (Score:1)
OK I'll bite. I'm interested in your retirement story. Your IRA/401k/whatever retirement strategy doesn't and hasn't historically contained any US stock holdings? I've been looking at what to do for retirement myself and I'm very i
Re:corporate 'greed' (Score:2)
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)
It's not an "either/or" question (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's not an "either/or" question (Score:1)
I don't get it. Big companies have have PR/advertising departments for decades. How is a blog any different from that? Of course companies want to keep control of their "corporate voice", but they already know how to do that, and they have bee
Re:It's not an "either/or" question (Score:2)
greed first (Score:3, Insightful)
My blog (Score:5, Funny)
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"!
Re:My blog (Score:2)
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?
Re:My blog (Score:1)
Mood: Vengeful yet gay
B. Gates
Re:My blog (Score:1)
That one was even better than mine!
IBM encourages company blogging (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:IBM encourages company blogging (Score:2)
Re:IBM encourages company blogging (Score:2)
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.
Re:IBM encourages company blogging (Score:1)
It's extremely cool that IBM has gone so far as to post guidelines for external blogging...maybe they will blaze a trail the rest of
Re:IBM encourages company blogging (Score:2)
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.
I say it's another crass form of marketting (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I say it's another crass form of marketting (Score:2)
Re:I say it's another crass form of marketting (Score:1)
Not only that, but they are shamelessly trying to get public attention by "exposing the human side of the company", or whatever. Gimme a break! Joel Spolsky's, Eric Sink's, Microsoft's blogs are in sooo many ways simply PR stunts, that I am sometimes quite disgusted. Yeah, it may be worth reading these, (interesting, informative), but I really wander how much are these guys into it because it's good for their company (as opposed to, let's say, "I want to say someth
Getting fired (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Getting fired (Score:2)
Re:Getting fired (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Getting fired (Score:1)
Re:Getting fired (Score:2)
Also: Dooce [dooce.com], etc.
-b
Forget why they DO - tell me why they DON'T (Score:5, Interesting)
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.)
Re:Forget why they DO - tell me why they DON'T (Score:1, Offtopic)
OK, sure. What's a good psychologist blog I could read?
Re:Forget why they DO - tell me why they DON'T (Score:3)
Blogspotting (Score:2)
Good business... (Score:1)
Safety first (Score:1)
Those companies that have managed to do this see no harm in trying out publicly accessible Wikis too. However such companies usually are sma
Here at disney.. (Score:1)
Internal Opposition... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
It's just business stupid. (Score:1)
Corporate Blogging (Score:1)
Why the company I own blogs (Score:1)
The reason is two-fold:
1) community for greed's sake.
2) community for its own sake.
To expand on the first: I get lots of email from customers who are anxious to share the details of their metalworking and electronics projects with someone; hardware hacking can be a bit of a lonely hobby. By helping customers share their stories with each other,
Blogging for the Enlightened Man (Score:2)
Just another way of communicating (Score:1)
Blogs are quite new, and it will take a while before they are popularly understood as well as say a telephone is understood as a communication mechanism.
However, by the time effective use of blogs is on its way to being commonly understood, the Next Big Thing in Internet based communication will be on the way in, and people will be grappling with the same questions.
BTW, the Next Big Thin
Cluetrain manifesto (Score:2)
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.
weather forecast blog (Score:1)
Earth Satellite [earthsat.com] (the same folks who deliver the global imagery in Google Maps) recently deployed a weather blog [earthsat.com] with posts from the weather forecast editor. Subscribers to the company's line of weather forecast products can use the forum to discuss the products and asks questions of the weather scientists.
Blog software tools, but not blogging (Score:1)
As for actual corporate blogging, we're not doing it. We talked about it, but decided we didn't really have that many pressing things to say, and couldn't imagine that peopl
Back in the bad old days (Score:2)
I used the flames that the customers sent me as a sort of moral guidepost. If I had enough complaints, I'd print off pages of them and use them to show the bosses how
Canadian business blogs? (Score:2)
Desire for exposure / profitable != greed (Score:1)
Rules of thumb (Score:1)