BloggerCon2: Blogging in Business

Dave Weinberger is doing Blogging in Business. Dave is too good of a speaker to pass up and it relates to my work.

• Have blogs underperformed in business world? I'm not seeing them spring up at most businesses.
• Make your own home page did not happen, but web logs adapted more rapid.
• Maybe they don't work well for business. They are already spending money on PR et. al.
• Are businesses blogs really blogs?
• What is the blogging ROI? [Ray: employee leaves but the knowledge on their blog stays behind.]

• Blog as supply chain and part of open source???
• Replace newsletter and email discussion with weblog.
• Business people using blog to distinguish themselves as expert in area.
• Why blog? Better placement in google.
• Internal blogs: CEO first?
• External blogs: still developing policies - what corporations can make that jump.
• Lawyers don't write blogs: firms are interested in voice of firm
• constraints: off-hand "comment from three years ago could hurt me"
• Lawyers: could be used when you have to argue other side of the case
• Dave: We will all be capable to embarassing each other by Googling each other in the future.
• [Ray: legal has no case law on blogs so they are reluctant to authorize blogs]
• Using RSS search engines and then commenting. [sort of reverse blog]
• Corp that let go of the message? Sun;
• How do we see the curve going? Three years or more until corp adapt external blogs.
• External blogs are easier than internal blogs
• Businesses use every other medium, so don't you expect that they'll use blogs.
• CEO is interested in narrowcasting, not Prell, but specific community - customers, engineers, etc.
• If internal blogs are easier, what does that change?
• Blogs are "off the record" in our company - more communications
• in large companies: more efficient communication patterns, accelerated project cycles, emergent intelligence
• Narrowcasting is right. Only voice is the blog for some.
• Are marketers using bloggers as influencers (Tipping Point)? Dr. Pepper
• Running a project over a time zone and "divide day back into 24 hours" instead on instant IM
• Social incentives are better than boards
• [Ray: web logs in business could become like time clocks. Why haven't you posted in the last hours?]
• Simple software of blogging is replacing more complicated knowledge management software.
• Publishing is better than locking up in a repository. So people do it more.

Business Examples