July 10, 2003

New Kids on the Blog
Posted by pegasus@jpbutler.com">Jason Butler at 10:10 AM -

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer discusses the outbreak of employee blogging at Microsoft.

Employee blogs can put a human face on a monolithic corporation, giving outsiders new insights into a company's culture and building a sense of community around its products. But corporate traditionalists also worry when employees express their personal thoughts about work in a public venue, without so much as a quick read by the PR department.

"They're sort of watching it," Scoble said of Microsoft's executives. "They're allowing the bloggers to talk and hoping that nobody gets into trouble or gets sued, or a customer gets mad, or that we get quoted in the press and create a firestorm."

Scoble also discusses this on his own blog.

I am free to say anything I want. I can even tell Bill Gates to split up Microsoft here. Now, Bill is free to fire me at any time, because of what I write, but that doesn't take away the fact that I'm free to write it. I just have to be willing to live with the consequences of what I write.

So, HR folks, does this sort of unfiltered communication between employees and the general public freak you out? Drop me a line and let me know...

...