[Sigia-l] Corporate blogs, again

[anu gupta]

On Wed, Oct 22, 2003 at 02:10:23PM -0400, Listera wrote:
> "Adrian Howard" wrote:
> 
> > Blogs offer yet another way for organisations to communicate with the public.
> 
> This is what troubles me. Blogs are assumed to be personal efforts and
> independent. Otherwise what's the point? Does Microsoft with $50 billion in
> the bank really need Scobel to get its message out? It has been doing fine
> without blogs for nearly two decades, capable of planting any story it wants
> in just about any publication and influencing the market with any FUD it
> chooses. These corporate blogs seem to me to be just another tool used by
> corporations for their public PR.

I think you need to get over your MS obsession. Yes, blogs are often personal - but so what ? And maybe, just maybe, MS [because, after all, we can generalise about MS because they are the Borg] are seeking different ways of getting a message that they believe in out there. Good for them, now I'll make up my mind as to whether I believe the message.  

> 
> Since I just can't believe that the vast majority of corporations would
> tolerate a blogger (whose salary they pay) to criticize them with any
> regularity, I simply assume them to be an extension of the corporate PR.
> 
> Some argue that bloggers such as Scobel, for instance, give us a rare
> glimpse into the internals of companies like Microsoft. That's nonsense. If
> Microsoft wanted its internals to be public, there are a thousand different
> ways it could do so more effectively and with more credibility.

Examples please -  don't need a thousand, 75 will do.

> 
> So from the corporation's POV public-facing blogs are a great PR tool but
> from the public's POV they should be viewed with great skepticism. That to
> me is not a healthy combination, sustainable for the long run.
> 

LOL. ALternatives then ? Should we just leave "the public" with traditional corporate websites - remove any possible contact between employees and the "public" just in case some of them try and push their company's message ?

Dan Gillmor with an interesting piece on Business blogging [actually the comments are more interesting].

http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/001437.shtml#001437

cheers

anu