[Sigia-l] Corporate blogs, again

[Adrian Howard]

On Tuesday, Oct 21, 2003, at 04:36 Europe/London, Listera wrote:

[snip]
> Suppose a CEO comes to you and asks, "So you're a hotsot IA, do you 
> think we
> should allow our 10,000 employees to have a blogs?" What will you 
> advice?

I'd ask why they thought it would be useful. Listen to the answers. 
Offer some suggestions of my own. Make sure we all talked to some 
expensive lawyers. And then make a decision.

They'd have to have a pretty good answer to the "why" question tho :-)

> Shouldn't blogs be just personal?

I don't think so. The best corporate uses of blogging technologies I've 
come across are internal. Project blogs are an excellent lightweight 
internal reporting tool. Personal aggregators used to easily create 
"dashboard" overviews of various task blogs, etc. for project managers, 
management, et al.

However, I guess that the question you were really asking was whether 
publicly accessible blogs should be just personal?

The answer to that one would be it depends. Blogs offer yet another way 
for organisations to communicate with the public. Sometimes that will 
be useful. Sometimes it won't.

> Should they comment on one's own job? Could they ever be objective?
> Can you ever trust corporate bloggers on their employers?

As much as you can trust them with any other communications medium. 
We've been dealing with employers emailing, using bulletin boards, etc. 
Blogging is just another in the list.

> Are corporate bloggers under any legal obligation to favor their 
> employers?

That would depend on their contract, and the local laws.

> Is the corporation ultimately responsible for what's said in employee 
> blogs?

God knows... find a lawyer :-)

> Is it immoral for an employer to encourage blogging by its own 
> employees?

I don't see why it would be any more or less immoral than asking 
somebody to do any other task. If it's part of your job it's part of 
your job.

> Should employers sponsor and/or host employee blogs?
> Should the corporate site link to employee blogs?

If they think it would be useful to the company, then yes. Otherwise no.

> Should the corporation closely monitor employee blogs?

I would.

> Should it formally distribute corporate blogging guidelines?
> Should corporate bloggers disclose such guidelines they operate under?

I'd say yes. Just like you should have guidelines in any public facing 
communications from an organisation.

I do find it slightly odd that most of the fuss about corporate blog 
use seems to be around publishing information to the general public. 
For me the most interesting stuff is about organisations using blogging 
technologies to aggregate information (both internal and external).

Cheers,

Adrian