Recently in Corporate Blogging Category

On the Clingan Zone of the blogs of Sun employees (highlights are mine):

Now for what Blogging @ Sun has done for me. I've "met" (well, not face-to-face) some folks I now call friends. Ya' know it when ya' start asking about birthdays and kids. On another note, I feel that The Clingan Zone has enabled me to learn a lot in a short period of time thanks to the conversations I've had with blog readers that share a common interest. In turn, blog readers have told me The Clingan Zone has helped them decide to become Sun customers. Do the math and replicate that by the current 2886 blogs and we could be talking some serious business. Gotta clear out the non-blogging-heathen ranks @ Sun. Continuing on, The Clingan Zone has enabled me to enter new customer environments where I had already (and most often unknowingly) established a baseline of trust and credibility. My job became a bit easier. And frankly, more enjoyable. Blogging has also raised my visibility within Sun. More employees know who I am and come to me for help in my area(s) of expertise. In return, I know a boatload more Sun employees through their blogs and, heck yeah, I call them for their areas of expertise. My job got easier again. In a highly work-at-home sales force, the Blog has become a pseudo water cooler.

Interesting insight that says a lot about the rationale behind enterprise blogging, which combines ego-management and commercial efficiency in a striking way. What is even more striking is the comment made on this post by Sun's CEO, Jonathan Schwartz:

Blogging hasn't just moved the needle for Sun, it's moved the whole damn compass.

Does anybody use understatements in California?

in a recent post of Lilia where she writes about the personal vs. business dimensions of blogging, and attempts to position various blogs on a personal -> business scale on various dimensions. As she says:

From what I've seen so far most of the tensions around employee blogging are in the middle. A weblog purely on personal end is not likely to be very interesting for a company (I can't think of any business benefits or risks in that case ;). Something purely on business side I wouldn't call a weblog at all (biased by my own definition of a weblog), but in this case benefits and risks are defined by the way a company works.

This area of research is important to understand corporate blogging. It looks as if more than 80% of corporate blogs are really personal initiatives to communicate with the outside world, and not new forms of intranet spaces. I think the primary motivation of employees who blog is self-promotion, because they are proud of what they do in their company, and want to engage a conversation about it. As such, they favor an open conversation with the world, because it cannot be as casual inside the company, and the likelihood of engaging a real conversation is far lower. It is far easier to talk about your job with your human voice in the street with strangers than in a corporate seminar with colleagues. You may tend to be more critical about your bosses, but you will also tend to be more supportive of your company as a whole.

By the way, here's how my blog looks like:

Yahoo just launched a blogging service for small businesses based on MT. It will be interesting to know how it will fit in the toolbox and how all this will be seamlessly integrated.

Blogs at IBM
Blogs at SAP

Note that blogs at IBM are part of a bigger collaboration platform which includes forums and user groups as well.

Blogs at IBM
Blogs at SAP

Note that blogs at IBM are part of a bigger collaboration platform which includes forums and user groups as well.