By Brian Boyko
Editor, Network Performance Daily
Heather Havenstein at ComputerWorld just released a story online about corporate blogging – about how corporate blogs sound less like re-hashed press releases and have started sounding – well, more like humans. More like people. More like… us.
July 30, 2007 (Computerworld) — NetQoS Inc. is a vendor of network performance management software. But you’d be hard-pressed to figure that out from some of the online posts written by Brian Boyko, the Austin-based company’s designated corporate blogger.
In April, for example, a Boyko post about the Interplanetary Internet project – which is designed to extend the Net into outer space – prompted Internet luminary Vinton Cerf to post a comment on NetworkPerformanceDaily.com, the NetQoS blog.
And over the course of several months this year, the blog gained national attention after Boyko posted multiple entries about the case of a Connecticut school teacher whom a jury convicted on charges of risking injury to a minor for allegedly exposing students to pornographic images that appeared on a classroom computer.
Well, thanks, ComputerWorld! I’m glad that you consider NPD a major driving force in the world of corporate blogging. Ah, the life of a blogger! Women want me, men want to be me…
More seriously, I figured I’d use this as an excuse to talk about some of the points in the article – not to disagree with them but just to give you my view. The main thesis of the piece, which I overall agree with, is a good place to start:
Companies such as NetQoS, which launched its blog nine months ago, are eschewing Corporate Blogging 1.0 tactics that often result in blogs being used merely to post static marketing materials as an extension of companies’ Web sites. Now, a growing number of businesses are opening up their blogs to provide an outlet for the same kind of uncensored commentary and interaction that have made personal blogs such a popular medium on the Web.
I’m not sure I like the nomenclature of “Corporate Blogging 1.0.” We’re very much in “Corporate Blogging 0.9 beta” – those early efforts are probably best recognized as early alpha builds – if you’re going for the version number metaphor. There is so much – so incredibly much for us to learn! I have trouble understanding why our story with Vint Cerf wasn’t picked up by Slashdot when a “filler” editorial I did on Dungeons and Dragons was. I have trouble figuring out how one story on Slashdot netted over 100 comments, yet another story on Slashdot netted only 10, and neither of those stories got as many comments as there were on Slashdot, talking about the same story.
While I know more than most about this field on the theoretical level, what I know has not seen a lot of field testing yet, compared to more established areas of expertise, and there are going to be better ways to communicate with the audience that simply haven’t been found yet – blogging is just so new.
And there is this paragraph, near the conclusion:
“It has to be a realistic discussion about industry trends and issues that are important, potentially even issues that are antagonistic or troublesome,” Fishkin said. Otherwise, “you look even more ridiculous than if you never attempted it.”
I’m not sure about that. I can look pretty ridiculous anyway…
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