Boz Weblog

Why Corporate Blogging Is Different: 1. Civility

In keeping with my earlier posts on blog attacks, I did some research and found some interesting debates on the role of civility in the blog phenomenon, some of them difficult to decipher but probably worth the effort.  But is there something different about civility in blogging from any other medium?  Seems to me a question worth investigating.  One reason corporate blogging might be different from personal blogging is the role of civility.  As with email and message boards, flame wars are a common event in blog-land.  But flaming is not the kind of thing corporate types typically do well, and it probably doesn't make good business sense.  Interesting then that this topic has not received greater play in discussions of corporate blogging.  One way to illustrate this is to do a search on blogging and civility in any of the major blog search engines.  What you get back is predominantly links to bile and spew decrying the loss of civility by the "other" side (read some examples and see for yourself), rather than a view of civility as an ethic shared among a group of communicators.  The results for delicious, technorati, and icerocket are just cases in the larger phenomenon. 

I gather we need to understand the emergent expectations regarding civility and blogging -- if any such expectations exist -- a little bit better.  Some expectation of civility is reasonable and necessary to ensure a commons in which people can discuss freely.  Civil doesn't mean boring, and that's where expert guidance and some additional social norming will probably happen.  Sure, there are ettiquette guides for corporate blogs, how-to's, manuals and the like, but I don't think we have really arrived at ettiquette for those among us who blog as part of their job.  Is there anything different about the way we should behave online, and in particular blogging, from other media?  We see some of this emerging with the assertive stance some have taken toward harassing commenters, and with the withdrawal, albeit temporary, by a few high-profile bloggers from the medium.  It will be interesting to see where this goes.  The social rules are likely to be as important than the technology in determining the uptake of blogging by mainstream corporate functions.

How Summer, 2005 Will Be Remembered: The Summer of Blog Attacks

Okay, I'm starting to relive that summer a few years ago when we could not get away from shark video, shark attacks, shark anger-management classes, only I am reliving it in an alternate medium.  One prominent blogger takes a week off after enduring more than a few pins and needles, and we have a trend.  Perhaps the most astute is not she who detects the trend, but she who invents the trend. Blog is fashion is reality.

Is it a bit tetchy out there?  Dunno.  But expectations have a way of making things happen.  Remember the summer of road rage on CA freeways, guns blazing every mile partly because people expected it to be so?  Given recent reports, as well as the wired-in status of citizen-bloggers, I suspect that any day now some poor blogger is going to get his leg chewed off while typing away in a coffee house, simply for having blogged about someone else in the same coffee house.

Next, we will have a debate about whether it is all the mainstream media's fault.

Does it Take a Billionaire to Create an A-List?

Stephen Baker of BusinessWeek online has an interesting take on the A-list blogs controversy.  Don't know what this is?  Representative sample.  In Mark Cuban: Create a different A list, Baker proposes creating a new blogging top-line to address the imbalance found in A-list blog rankings, caused by the many thousands of links built up by top blogs over the years.  All we need now is a TV commercial:  "I know - let's get Marky!  He'll fix anything!"  It helps if you have several billion to work with (plus a load of talent).

My take: If there is a market for such a service, someone will do it.  In fact, it's already been done in the seedier side of the net industry.  It might be nice to see a little more competitive oopmh in Western information markets, so maybe Cuban will take up the challenge.

I can't help noting that a huge portion of the A-list probably aren't blogs in the traditional sense - they're message boards, marketing sites, group publishing houses, and the like.  As Cuban points out, not a bad thing - just different.  The market will decide.

How does Baker's proposal differ from blogrolls, anyway?

Changing Expectations: "Why Don't They Have Broadband At My Yoga Retreat?"

Friend of mind taking a much-needed break to contemplate life, disconnect, and get in touch with her self.  She needs this.  How do I know?  Here's a question asked on a recent team call:  "I don't get it.  Why don't they have broadband at my yoga retreat?"

Translation:  She needs to get her Zen on.

I'm told some yoga centers now make people check their cell phones, keychains, mp3 players - and have even taken to going through people's bags - I guess some people feel they can better connect online.

Sandwich Makers Redux: Could I Have Some Mayo With That Crow? Or, Why Corporate Blogging Is The Next Big Thing To Chew On

TO ALL THE SANDWICH MAKERS:

I take it back.  No way I should have compared you to marketing types.  I realize now, after the hostile emails and hopefully-idle-threats regarding some future sub order o' mine, that sandwich makers and marketing types simply do not share career paths.

Never.

Ever.

This is not a comparison I will make again. Not on my blog, anyway.

Apparently, the Sandwich Makers have a Union, and they mean Business.

But then again, so do Corporate Marketing types - mean business, I mean..  And what is clear is that Corporate Blogging really will change patterns of communication in ways we have only begun to understand.  Very few of us know where This Thing is going.  I guess that when you don't know where you're going, it's helpful to have a Guide or Two.  And some technology to put it all together.

Too Late for a Copyright? InhouseBlog Cites IBM Corporate Blogging Guidelines for Reuse

I suppose it's too late to get copyright on the IBM Blogging Guidelines.  :)  Interesting to note that InHouse Blog, a news site for Inhouse Councel, cites those guidelines as an example to emulate.

The Failover Imperative in Scalable Social Computing Platforms

No knock on the excellent site below -- one of my favorites -- but the outage notice below, taken from a very popular social bookmarks site this evening, is an example of how, with decentralized, REST-style architectures, the loss of a single computing resource in a socio-technical network can cause all sorts of unintended consequences.  Many sites and RSS schemes left hanging as problem determination took place.  Glad to see things are getting better for the site as day turns to night and back again.  We have failover for technical systems - what about socio-technical systems?

Big Worlds: Blogging in the ElderSphere

I read Jen Huget's interesting Blogging Through The Ages in the Washington Post recently, and couldn't help wondering whether there is a "big world" aspect of the medium that has to some extent been overlooked.

So are Elders one example of a Big World -- a really, really big world?  Elders are not exactly a small demographic, and are the wealthiest (at least in Western countries), and in some respects are more-connected that other segments.  Yet works like Mark Buchanan's Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks has been taken to mean that people will be connecting in ever-more-refined groups.  Not sure if we're missing things with that model.  Oh maybe this is just a straw figure argument.

Internet Report Shows One Persistent Blog Created Every 8 Seconds!!!

Thunderous news from the blogosphere as Dave Sifry of Technorati reports one new blog is created per second. Sample Feed:  Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Every second a blog - but not for the long slog. Of course, much gnashing of teeth over the fact that only 13 percent of these blogs are thought to remain active - as in, updated every week or more often.  So in interest of quick meta-analysis, I'm releasing a new report,

Report:  One New Persistent Blog Every 8 Seconds!,

in which I take the very careful analytical step of dividing 60 seconds by 13 percent, and then after a careful peer review, release my report, in which I show that every 8 seconds, a new, persistent blog is created.  This doesn't show, of course, how many individuals are blogging.  Nor does it show whether these are in fact individual, group, or corporate blogs.  Mileage may vary.

For a full copy of my report, please highlight this post, use CTRL-C, then in your favorite text editor, press CTRL-V.

Here's hoping The Guardian picks up my report, whence it will make its way around the world.

Blog Inflection Point, Please!

I had occasion to give some career advice to a recent college graduate today.  Said graduate, who has a 4.0 from a pretty prestigious university, was looking to become yet another Blog Expert, making her living with missives about the impact the technology is having on business and culture, this despite not having experience or a background in any related field.  Now, clearly there are paying customers for this line of work, and it's a good job if you can get it, but here's what I said:

"How long do you think it will be before you are working at the sandwich shop down the street?

Unless you reeeeeally have something interesting to say, or unless it's your true passion, you might want to write this 1,000 timeson a squeaky chalkboard:

I will not blog about blogging.
I will not blog about blogging.
I will not blog about blogging.
(only 997 times to go)"