I've done more speaking media interviews this week then I've probably done in my entire life. I was surprised at how many times we were asked by corporate people and media fold with corporate audiences about lawsuits and intellectual property theft.
Steve Nipper, an intellectual property lawyer told us during an interview for our book that companies should worry more-a lot more-about email causing those problems. The statistics back him up. Big time.
Consider:
- There are 28.X million blogs today. We don't know just how many are business-related, but there's no question that number is growing at an accelerating rate.
- These blogs, according to PubSub are being updated with new posts at the rate of one per second.
- According to Charlene Li, of Forrester Research, there is not yet one case of a lawsuit being started because of a corporate blog. Nor has there been one example of intellectual property being stolen (There is a case of two Apple Computer consultants being sued for using their blogs to break NDA agreements).
- Meanwhile, company secrets are being blabbed all the time on corporate email. Email has been used by prescutors as evidence in a large number of recent corporate malfeasance trials, from Martha Stewart to the current Enron case.
Should companies shut down their employee email--and for that matter--cut off company telephone lines, and just give everyone a blog? Of course not. My point is a little different:
More people fear flying than driving, but it is very clear that flying is statistically safer. But it's hard to persuade the people who fear air travel. Many end up doing it because it is necessary to live a modern life. Often, they overcome their fears and flying becomes second nature. However, others stay home. Their worlds become limited because of fear.
Te same goes for businesses who fear blogging. They can keep doing what they have always done, because they fear this new innovation. Or they can live full business lives.
