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IEE Review | March 2006 | www.iee.org/review

The image of blogging as the preserve of the web-obsessed is fading fast

By Stephanie Gordon

well-known example is Wikipedia, an online collaborative encyclopedia that allows registered visitors to update and create pages. Wikis are also being used extensively in technology companies. BLOGGING GOES CORPORATE An October 2005 survey of 100 UK business managers, organised during a Londonbased seminar on the changing media landscape and the adoption of new technologies, revealed that just one in ten were using blogging technologies. Nevertheless, almost half of them predict that the future of corporate communications will move online. The attractions of corporate blogging are varied, but include improving market status, personalising customer relationships, boosting public relations and improving recruitment. Company blogs are also being used to foster internal collaboration and improve knowledge management. Microsoft Research Labs, for example, uses blogs and video blogs (vlogs) to allow employees to share information and ideas with each other and a wider audience. Nikos Drakos, research director at IT analyst firm Gartner, believes that there are unique benefits to be found in Microsofts adoption of blogging. [Microsoft researchers] show you their computer screen and how theyre programming. That kind of technical blogging is valuable because you cannot convey it in the written word, he says.

INNOVATION

and the Internet seem to be inseparable. Take the blog. At its heart, a blog is little more than a mini website, where individuals can record their activities, thoughts, musings and ramblings for others to read and comment on. The principle may be simple, but blogging is taking off in a big way. There are currently some 50 million blogs worldwide, and, according to blog analysers Blogpulse, the European blogosphere is growing by 50,000 new blogs a day. Booming growth statistics notwithstanding, blogging has a bit of an image problem, with the typical blogger generally viewed as a web obsessive intent on telling the world what he (yes, he) had for lunch. In reality, blogging is currently experiencing the equivalent of an image makeover as research institutions and large corporations get in on the act. Companies are increasingly harnessing weblogs and related technologies as platforms where data, information, knowledge and opinion can be shared and traded among customers, prospects, employees, partners and the media in a two-way, open exchange. These days, if you search the Internet for a product, youre as likely to come across a posting about it on a blog as you are to find the website of the company that produced it.

WEBLOGS, WIKIS AND THE WEB A weblog is a diary or journal-based web site. It uses a straightforward content manage-ment tool, allowing new pages and entries to be created and updated easily, without the need to worry about design or architecture issues. Content can be filtered according to attributes, including category and author, and there is usually a system that allows visitors to comment on individual blog entries. Browser interfaces mean people can blog from anywhere on the web. Blogs differ from forums, message boards and newsgroups because only the author (or blog owner) is permitted to post entries, with readers restricted to commenting on individual posts. The wiki is a related technology It advances the blog concept by allowing . collaborative authoring with simple content management features that include lists of changed pages, author tracking and locking. They may also have version control and rollback features. The most

JARGON BUSTER
blog: short for weblog an online journal or log; blogging is the act of writing in a blog; the blogosphere is the community of blogs on the web wiki: an online journal that allows collaborative authoring; the Hawaiian word for quick, and often retrospectively referred to as the acronym for what I know is vlog: video log useful for training, when words are not efficient in demonstrating a technical concept splog: short for spamlog a covert, apparently objective blog created by a company to surreptitiously market its product to passing readers

IEE Review | March 2006 | www.iee.org/review

Illustrations: Jonathon Williams

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Sun Microsystems uses blogs for recording employees musings, and as an internal knowledge management tool. In May 2004, Suns president and chief operating officer, Jonathan Schwartz, established a blogging policy that encouraged everybody, outside and inside the company, to comment on Sun and its products, with the goal of improving communications with the larger IT community . Tim Bray, Suns director of web technologies, maintains that the impact of blogging at Sun has been huge. Benefits cited by Bray include empowering executives to get the companys message out into the community without intermediation by journalists and analysts, changing the perception of Sun from a faceless Californian monolith to a worldwide collection of bright, interesting people who care passionately about business infrastructure, and improving the companys ability to listen to the market by exposing the identities of thousands of employees to the world. For Sun, blogging has become an essential business tool, says Bray . GET YOUR STRATEGY STRAIGHT Blogs offer a more flexible and simple approach to managing content online, which raises the issue of the relationship between blogging and the corporate website. Nikos Drakos believes businesses need to get their web strategy straight. Given that there are many blogging and wiki tools that work very well as a flexible content management system, many companies are asking themselves why they are paying for dedicated content management systems (CMSs). In some cases it is possible to base a website on a community platform such as a blogging or wiki tool. Companies, large or small, need to decide what the purpose of their website is; how they want to communicate with their customers or the public, and

Above: The wide variety of free blogging tools enables anyone to have their say

then what technology they should use to support it. They also need to consider the extra capabilities that dedicated CMSs provide, such as complicated workflow mechanisms. KNOW WHAT THEYRE SAYING For companies and organisations, blogging brings risks as well as benefits. Managers may worry about the ease and speed with which company secrets, personal abuse, libel or invasions of privacy can be blogged. Unfortunately, monitoring this sort of potentially damaging material can be far from easy . There are millions of blogs and messageboards worldwide and any one of them can affect your organisation, explains Alan Scot, chief marketing officer

BLOGGING SOFTWARE A ROUGH GUIDE

There are two types of blogging software hosted blog software, where your blog resides on the service providers server, and independent blog software, which must be downloaded from a software company and installed on your own web server. For the individual, free services such as Googles Blogger, SixAparts TypePad and MSNs MySpace can be implemented quickly and at little cost. Companies wanting a swift entry to the blogosphere have a number of options. Server-based packages, like SixAparts MovableType or the open-source WordPress, are useful for organisations looking to create a wide platform for multiple employee blogs. Blogging software vendors are also responding to the growing trend for corporate blogging and adopting features more likely to be found in content management systems (CMSs) and enterprise collaboration suites. Drupal is an open-source system that integrates weblogs, content management, discussion and collaboration features. Application Suite from iUpload also includes this type of advanced CMS capability, which is not found in the average blogging software. Six Aparts Movable Type is aimed at a more technical audience, enabling them to create blogs that have the look and feel of websites.

IEE Review | March 2006 | www.iee.org/review

BLOGS AS MARKETING TOOLS

brand name search. This could have implications for corporate strategy if a competitor has a weblog that is updated more often than your website, its is more likely to rank higher on search engines. The example of Butler Sheet Metal, a small sheet metal fabrication plant in East Lincolnshire, shows how effective blogs can be in boosting a companys profile. Employee Paul Woodhouse established the Tin Basher blog to provide an honest, humorous airing for his thoughts on the company. This became so popular that, when it was subsequently incorporated into the companys website, page impressions increased from 240 to 1500 in the first month. Companies can get product feedback from employee blogs, and can encourage fans of a product to act as unofficial brand evangelists. Interesting content provides added value through a feedback system where ideas, concepts and opinions are discussed openly and freely. It also allows firms to respond rapidly and effectively to negative publicity. But Nikos Drakos of Gartner warns that marketing messages and disguised selling, often known as spamlogs, or splogs, are quickly found out, and can harm a companys reputation.

Blogs can help raise a companys search engine rankings. Organisations that rate highly on search engines have frequently updated blogs, and many links from other blogs and websites. In contrast, relatively static corporate websites rarely come out top in a

at Factiva, a provider of tools designed to help companies monitor whats being said on blogs and messageboards. Tim Bray, when writing Suns comprehensive blogging policy, sought input from the management team and worked with the companys lawyers to achieve a balance of encouragement, advice and caution. The policy was published on the Internet as soon as it was approved, and warns bloggers not to reveal secrets or make financial disclosures that might violate security laws. RESEARCH AIDS As the web has evolved in to an increasingly social environment, blogging and related technologies are becoming more important to academia, In particular, blogging can be used to introduce, test and share research ideas, while using registration and secure access approaches to address concerns over intellectual property . The University of Warwicks weblog system is now the largest academic weblog in the world, with almost 4000 individual blogs and over 55000 entries. Sensitive research or project-driven blogs are secured behind the universitys firewalls, while less sensitive material is out in the open. According to John Dale, assistant director of IT

Services at Warwick, blogs play an invaluable role in helping students test the soundness of idea beyond the university, off-setting what Dale refers to a the overly domesticated, often hermetic thinking that comes with academic specialisation. The university uses an in-house tool called BlogBuilder, which gives it the flexibility to build new features. We needed the ability to insert equations into a blog entry using LaTeX, and to have better integration with other web services such as authentication at Warwick. It also means we have better control over scalability, says Dale. BLOGGING FOR ALL Blogs have acquired a life of their own, and will to continue evolve. From text-based blogs to systems incorporating video and audio, a time of increased online communication and collaboration is upon us, with all the benefits and pitfalls that implies. s Stephanie Gordon is a freelance journalist (steph_gordon2@hotmail.com)

IEE Review | March 2006 | www.iee.org/review

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