Economist on corporate blogs

The Economist has an article about corporate blogs and PR, with a focus on Robert Scoble's blog. It has this interesting bit: Scoble's blog

caught the attention of Lenn Pryor, who is—really—Microsoft's “director of platform evangelism�. Until then, says Mr Pryor, Microsoft had been evangelising mostly one-on-one, “which doesn't scale well�. But Mr Pryor had a radical idea. Afraid of flying, he had met a pilot at United Airlines who told him to tune into channel nine from his plane seat, where he could listen in on the communications of the pilots. Mr Pryor did, and soon “the irrational nature of my fear started to fade�. It had something to do with hearing real people talking honestly. He realised that Microsoft, the target of similarly irrational fears, should have its own version of channel nine, and that public blogging by insiders should be an important part of it.

It's an interesting metaphor.

Comments

[Franz]

Yes, I do like the metaphor ... it matches the way I have ideally thought of internal blogs as means of continuing, informal communications about the state of the business, allowing us to make adjustments to our actions. Thats not the way they are typically used today, but it could be a way of communicating between management and employees in a more efficient and useful way. Thanks for the link, will share it internally.