The Fortune 500's Blogging

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Sunday January 1, 2006 @04:52AM from the probably-4%-to-much dept.

zlite writes "There's a new wiki that's tracking which of the Fortune 500 have public blogs. So far it appears that less than 20 of them are doing so, and their average share performance badly lags the rest of the F500. Why? This post suggests one reason: it's so risky that companies tend do it only when their traditional corporate messaging isn't working."

8 of 42 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Re: The Fortune 500's Blogging by manavendra · 2006-01-01 04:58 · Score: 5, Insightful

Public corporate blogging is dangerous territory, as I found out the hard way.

Whilst being encouraged to record experiences, insights and lessons learnt when working with partners and their products, in a publicly available, searchable format, I found the moment you mention corporate names and *ANY* shortcomings, suddenly this "sharing knowledge" becomes "finding scapegoat".

I guess what's required is an explicit corporate IT policy, with clear, specific guidelines on what can and cannot be blogged, if at all. This policy then needs to be shared, and "promoted" - beginning with the departments that would use it the most - IT. Unless there's a clear directive that knowledge sharing is appreciated, not much would change in the Fortune 500 world

--
http://efil.blogspot.com/
What's all the fuss about, please? by SuperBanana · 2006-01-01 05:00 · Score: 2, Insightful

Can someone explain the fuss over "corporate" web logs?
I've always regarded them as nothing more than "friendlier press releases". Also, with only a few cosmetic changes, the usual "recent press releases" page bears a striking resemblence to "web logs"...

--
Please help metamoderate.
1. Re:What's all the fuss about, please? by manavendra · 2006-01-01 05:07 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Ah, yes. They are cheaper, friendlier PR exercises to begin with.
  
  However, in this world where corporates fall over each other to promote "do no evil" or appear "friendly" (think of the number of staff employed to provide information to random callers - from students looking to do their internships, to university professors, to competitors fishing for information, to, in extreme cases, corporate spies), they then try to promote blogging to *other* parts of the organization than PR/marketing.
  
  The impetus here being two fold: 1) Prospective candidate will know how "good" they are to work for or will get a taste of the "work environment", and 2) they can demonstrate their competitors/stakeholders of the "open" culture they believe in and are thus less suspect of doing evil...
  
  The last company I worked for encouraged their engineers to blog on their corporate server, because they had no other, better/easier means of spreading corporate bonhomie...
  
  --
  http://efil.blogspot.com/
Depends on the blog by Anonymous Coward · 2006-01-01 05:04 · Score: 1, Insightful

If you're reading a corporate blog by Google or IBM, for example, you may just be reading a fancy press release, but one with interesting/technical details.
Usual blogodreck by Animats · 2006-01-01 05:48 · Score: 3, Insightful

So we have a Slashdot link to a blog discussing another blog which links to another blog which links to a list of about fifteen companies which links to blog landing pages which finally link to the "corporate blogs". And every step of the way, there's advertising.
When you finally get to the "corporate blogs", they turn out to be PR pieces.
Nothing to see here, move along.
(It's striking how few blogs use a moderation system, like Slashdot's. Of course, Slashdot still doesn't let you moderate the stories.)
Alternate explanation by Just+Some+Guy · 2006-01-01 06:20 · Score: 2, Insightful

Another possibility is that you don't become one of the biggest companies in America by paying people to dick around with things like blogs. Slashdot and Fark were bad enough already.

--
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Re:I've seen some relevant reasons first hand... by Just+Some+Guy · 2006-01-01 06:27 · Score: 1, Insightful

A friend of mine was fired from a job because he posted negative commments in a public forum about the employer.
In related news, behavioralists have verified that biting the hand that feeds you continues to be inadvisable.

--
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Re: The Fortune 500's Blogging by superpulpsicle · 2006-01-01 08:19 · Score: 2, Insightful

The people doing the corporate blogging should not be the upper management or PR folks. Their views represent 1% of the company and are always positive. It should be the regular joe in the trenches with a day-to-day grind doing the speaking. Only then would people actually take the message seriously.