Who's Blogging Wrong?

We are starting Chapter 10, the second of our two "Darkside of Blogging Chapters.  We plan to discuss examples of blogs that hurt the companies using them, not helping them.  Character blogs and anonymous blogs are prime examples.  So are companies using blogs to distribute their press releases and PR materials.  We are looking for as many examples as possible--so long as they relate somehow to business interests. Please send us your worst and ugliest examples.

Comments

[Josh]

I mix my personal life and my business. But I'm not going to stop anyway so....

[vishi]

I have a bad blog, I don't update it.

[James Kew]

See this MeFi thread for discussion on some bad business blogging from GoDaddy founder/president Bob Parsons. (Note that the current headline from Parsons' blog appears on the GoDaddy home page; not a good idea when that headline is highly, and polarisingly, politically-charged.)

And on fake corporate blogs: search gapingvoid. Hugh's pretty good at nailing this sort of thing.

[Morgan]

Greetings,
I hate to say it aloud, but I think the Sun CTO's (Jonathan Schwartz) blog was a terrible idea, because it's all 'rah-rah', sunshine and light, 'look how bad our competitors are', go-team-ing. I finally unsubscribed, realizing that he was never going to say anything not thoroughly vetted by PR.

It's one of the reasons I like reading Scoble; while he clearly thinks the Kool-Aid is tasty and a cool, delicious breakfast treat that EVERYONE should enjoy over a warm TabletPC, he's still able to point out when it's not quite flavored right. ('Mmmm...tas..wait a minute, you put just a little too much cyanide, and nowhere near enough RSS in that product! Firings, all around!')

Mr. Schwartz is a CTO though, so I can't blame him. That said, it's one of the few blogs I've unsubscribed from in frustration, so I thought I'd nominate it.

-- Morgan

[J]

Google Blog

The blog is nothing more than astroturf. The postings are just press releases written by company shills pretending to be the common worker.

Have a look at the postings' authors. Notice that every posting is by a different person (except for the ones by the "Google Blog Team"). How is it that so many different people get to post on the company's main blog? Could it be that they are being hand-picked by some PR team to shill for them?

How is it that each post discusses exactly one thing, and that each thing only gets one post? Why are all the posts acompanying a product release or pumping the company's image? Are the authors being given press releases to parrot?

Since this Blog is a PR excersise, why are so many of the posts poorly written?

[Oscar]

I nominate Scobleizer.

The problem I have with this blog is very simple, Scoble posts a lot about technology but he doesn't really seem to have a good grasp of technology related issues, in a non-superficial manner.

First clue of this is his constant refering of himself as a geek, when in reality, he's just another marketroid paid by MS to enhance their image. Nothing wrong with that, but please, we all know the marketing guy down the hall that tries to talk about "cool technologies" to the people who actually design and implement them, it's very pathetic.

He's very moody, and hypes the few technologies he knows a bit about (Tablet PCs and RSS) so much that it makes you dizzy.

If MS wants to create a blog to have a better image among the development community, and "geeks" in general, they need to get somebody more in tune with the community.

[Trudy W. Schuett]

Blogs by politicians who don't allow comments are the worst, IMHO.

For example, Sen. Joe Biden's blog
http://uniteourstates.com/blog/
gives you a way to get updates, a way to donate, a way to promote his blog for him, but no way to talk back. This may well be damaging to his presidential bid in this new era of blogging.

[JD]

Wipro Weblog.

Check my entry about it:
http://jdk.phpkid.org/index.php?p=1173

[Andy in VT]

I'm puzzled by this statement: "So are companies using blogs to distribute their press releases and PR materials."

Why is a blog a bad place to distribute PR materials. Blogs are merely CMS apps being used for a very specific purpose -- usually telling stupid life stories. They are perfect engines to use for distributing material that non-tech savvy employees need to be resposible for.

I won't make a sweeping assessment of the goal of your book by this one statement, but I hope you are going to avoid the ridiculous position that blogs should only be used for interactive, personality-driven, opinion-dependent content sharing. They can be used for so much more. Even boring press releases.

[Anti Pants]

1. David Hansson's blog (www.loudthinking.com) is fast becoming an extension of 37 signals. He makes Schwartz look extremely fair and balanced by way of comparison. It's basically an example of a bright guy with poor social awareness tainting your company's image.
2. Scoble's blog itself is awful. It's basically become a link list with infrequent meanderings into amateurish social policy matters. Limited insight, frequent retractions (due to limited internal digestion and self-perceived notional urgency, not just introspective candor--if Robert thought half the things through that he retracts he wouldn't seem to have so little conviction of his own). The medium sucks too; using Radio is so four+ years ago. My three-legged cat wrote a better comment server last week and then he shat in a box--top that.
3. Borland's blogs. Narrow and inconsequential... hmm, much like Borland I suppose.

This is probably in a different post, but Dare's blog is one of the better Microsoft blogs. Blogs.msdn.com is good and has a breadth, but Dare is a.) wicked smart about what he knows about, b.) so direct it makes him highly credible--he criticizes MSFT in a way that seems geniune and unorchestrated (unlike Scoble) and c.) it does tie other threads re: the company together. Dare seems like the kind of guy you'll have trouble keeping in the Kool-Aid line very long at the current rate.

[Josh Bancroft]

Disclaimer: I work for Intel, but don't represent them. These are my opinions.

I think that Intel is currently doing a lousy job of participating in the blogosphere, at least externally. This is a page that describes the only RSS feeds available at Intel.com:

http://www.intel.com/intel/rss.htm

They're all press releases. No real news. Certainly no human voice or stories. Just rehashed press releases and news items. So dry, soulless, and boring when they show up in my aggregator.

Internally, some progress is being made. There are a couple dozen of us who blog actively on the internal blog system (which only sprang into non-sanctioned existence a while ago). I, for one, am actively evangelizing the benefit and necessity of blogging to anyone and everyone at Intel (and outside of Intel) that will listen. Progress is being made, but there's a very deep culture of fear and paranoia at Intel. Andy Grove is famously quoted as saying "only the paranoid survive," and that culture is evident in Intel's hesitation to embrace blogging.

My ultimate goal is to have the same kind of impact (in nature, if not in scale) on Intel as Scoble has had on Microsoft. Adam Curry said at Gnomedex that "not only should [Scoble] be running Microsoft, [he] already is." I don't want to run anything, but I'd love to help Intel get on the Cluetrain.

Feel free to contact me for any more info if you'd like to use Intel as an example or case study for the book. Keep up the good work, guys! We're watching!

http://www.blogmagazine.com is used by magazines.com as nothing more than a way to create more links for search engines.

Lot's of time wasted

[Robyn]

I have to disagree on Scoble's blog. I like it.

Obviously he can't come out and say something that's going to get him fired, but considering that, he's entertaining and gives readers a bird's eye view of what it's like to work as an exec at MS. No press releases or mindless company blurbs here.

I subbed to him a few months ago, and while I once considered un-subbing when he was on vacation and I was bored with commenting on the trip, his blog was worth sticking with through that dry spot. IMHO.

[Leonardo Herrera]

IE Blog, and Google blog. Boring, inhuman coldness in every post.

[Leonardo Herrera]

IE Blog, and Google blog. Boring, inhuman coldness in every post.

[Randy Charles Morin]

Leonardo, have you read IE Blog? Those are real people, some of which, I've met. Far from inhuman.

[Nick Nichols]

Any business blog (newspaper columnists are notorious about this) who keeps their entries behind a registration wall is a bad blogger.

I like the Spencer Katt Blog from eWeek—http://blog.ziffdavis.com/katt—he writes about whatever he feels like, updates often, and for a character blog it has a lot of personality ... because its written by a real character—ME!!!!!!!
Sorry, guzzling Schlitz and watching John Wayne in Hatari and just thought I'd plug myself—and this is the honesty you'll find from me—I'd rather be drinking and watching DVDs than covering technology ... so I cover it the best I can so they won't take my perks away! BTW, any corporate blogging by any upper management is silly—even if they say, "I don't like the gravy," you won't see them say the whole entree stinks—sorry, girlfriend just shut off the Duke and put on Food Network, I would have had a more macho analogy otherwise ;-)
xxooxo,
Spencer

I like the Spencer Katt Blog from eWeek—http://blog.ziffdavis.com/katt—he writes about whatever he feels like, updates often, and for a character blog it has a lot of personality ... because its written by a real character—ME!!!!!!!
Sorry, guzzling Schlitz and watching John Wayne in Hatari and just thought I'd plug myself—and this is the honesty you'll find from me—I'd rather be drinking and watching DVDs than covering technology ... so I cover it the best I can so they won't take my perks away! BTW, any corporate blogging by any upper management is silly—even if they say, "I don't like the gravy," you won't see them say the whole entree stinks—sorry, girlfriend just shut off the Duke and put on Food Network, I would have had a more macho analogy otherwise ;-)
xxooxo,
Spencer

[shel]

Since you didn't sign in I must assume you are both anonymous and fictitious. Since here I am writing to you, I must assume the misbehavior of my youth has flashed back at me.

[Gautam]

Has to be the Wipro Weblog

http://www.wiproweblog.com

:P

I told you about that earlier Shel :-)

Did you see Dave Pollard's view that big businesses should not blog?

http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/

[Mark]

This Jackasses blog is offensive and rude!

http://spaces.msn.com/members/whyihateyou

Read through his BS. His latest entry about his vacation was ok but everything else is HARSH and RUDE

[Leonardo Herrera]

Leonardo, have you read IE Blog? Those are real people, some of which, I've met. Far from inhuman.

Randy, I've read it. The fact they are real people doesn't make their message more human. All they do is chanting praises for their software, instead of hearing people and generate change through it. For example, in this article they suggest a way that is "easy and efficient" to implement rounded corners, that is not easy nor efficient. Do you really think that's "human?" I read that article and cannot think why a real person would say "efficient and easy" about that thingamagik. That's nothing but propaganda.

Of course, from time on time they post a truly interesting post, and that's why I still have it in my RSS reader. But I still think they are blogging "wrong," whatever that means :-)

[frankp]

Andy in VT - I assume what's meant is that companies shouldn't expect to reap the full benefits of personal blogging if all they do is lash up PR releases - however I too think that blogging software, like any tool is there to be abused in all kinds of interesting ways... I use it on 9mmfilm as a kind of personal knowledge base more than anything else, and also use it on bifsniff.com to easily update a cartoon site weekly...

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

And blog software can be used for not just Anti or Pseudo or Quasi Blog purposes.

Blog software can be used for completely Unblog or Nonblog purposes.

For example, I'm now experimenting with a postless blog concept. There are no posts at all, ever. Just a long, elongating sidebar stretching off to Who Knows Where.

Why?

Shh. I don't reveal all all at once.