Jena McGregor, writing for Fast Company -- It's A Blog World After All -- reinforces the conversation that many in my Knowledge Networking cohort have been talking and writing about for some time now. Weblogs are an inexpensive vehicle for knowledge sharing in both large and small organizations - offering a flavor of 'Personal Knowledge Mapping' that is appealing to a larger audience. The following is an excerpt from Ms. McGregor's article - highlighting the 'Knowledge Management' potential of Weblogs in the Corporate environment.
Verizon, IBM, Microsoft, and Dr. Pepper are all climbing on the blogwagon. Turns out, Web logs are a nifty knowledge-management tool. And companies also see them as a promising medium for advertising (naturally).
"...So do blogs hold the key to seamless sharing of collective corporate intelligence, the holy grail of knowledge management? Web log software is cheaper to install and maintain than many knowledge-sharing programs, and it's extremely simple to use. Knowledge software often requires employees to take both an extra step and extra time to record what they know, and to fit their knowledge into a database of inflexible categories. Internal blogs are more integrated into a worker's regular daily communications. IBM began blogging in December, and by February, some 500 employees in more than 30 countries were using it to discuss software development projects and business strategies. And while blogs' inherently open, anarchic nature may be unsettling, Mike Wing, IBM's vice president of intranet strategy, believes their simplicity and informality could give them an edge. "It may be an easy, comfortable medium for people to be given permission to publish what they feel like publishing," he says.
But that informal transparency is precisely why many companies' embrace of blogs is at best uneasy. Internally, blogs have the potential to let employees who wouldn't otherwise be seen as authorities have a voice with a lot of impact. "[Companies] are not going to be able to stuff it back into the box," says Greg Lloyd, CEO of Traction, a business-oriented blog software company. Externally, the fears are even greater. Letting employees speak directly to customers requires a huge amount of trust. A loose cannon might reveal corporate secrets, give out the wrong message, or even open up the company to legal trouble.
Despite those worries, no new medium can go for long without being turned into a marketing channel. Got a message to get out or a product to promote? The blog world is populated by folks who thrive on racing to be first to post news and getting others to link to, or "blogroll," them. They're naturally the opinionated, hyperconnected influencers marketers crave. Jonathan Carson, president and CEO of BuzzMetrics, a New York-based firm that mines message boards, listservs, and blogs to see what's being said about companies, says his clients ignored blogs nine months ago. Today, more than half specifically ask whether his monitoring includes the blogosphere. "If companies focus in on what's going on in the blog world, it's an amazing leading indicator on what's going to break in the real world," he says..."
K-Collector Topics: blogrolls categories Conversations Corporations Influence Intranets Knowledge Management Productivity Weblogs Writing IBM Microsoft VerizonYou are pulling together some very interesting threads for me - thank you so much! I am reading and learning a lot at the moment about how small businesses can best use limited resources to manage knowledge (with an emphasis at the moment on retaining knowledge when employees leave - but that's incidental). Your comments on blogs have given me some new thoughts to pursue. I love the internet!
Keep blogging! Jane
Posted by: Jane Penson at March 30, 2004 03:26 AM