IBM shows why employees shouldn’t blog on corporate sites

Blogs should never be erased — for any reason. That breaks the Web.

for any reason

We can not forget that we live in a litigious climate – and it potentially costs quite a bundle to defend oneself if the suit is not immediately dismissed.

Security: true, but an employee going somewhere else isn’t a lawsuit risk.

There’s an interesting way of rewriting corporate history. Apparently people’s biographies (i.e. what they do/did at other companies) can’t be integrated into it.

Scoble,

Follow up on this and post why Coulter left your firm.

Dude, it’s IBM. They’re bizarre. My thoughts when I read that Microsoft had hired the head of WebSphere?

“Oh they’re just fucked now”

Like who cares? Corporate blogs stink pretty much. Who reads them but geeks? IBM doesn’t need stinking blogs and Sun isn’t going to stay in business any longer because Schwartz blogs. Tim Bray probably helps more with his personal blog.

I will concede that Microsoft’s blog effort probably helped them with techies who use their products. But they didn’t help the larger story Microsoft has in the marketplace.

“Blogs should never be erased — for any reason. That breaks the Web.”

so, by extension, ANY web page should never be erased? Or do blogs enjoy some sort of special exempt status?

I don’t think I agree. What is the next step, a web page should never be edited?

It looks like they’ve heard the criticism and put it back, just with the note “Mr. Ferguson is no longer an employee of IBM.”

Christopher Barger IBM has also left a comment on Simon Phipps website

8: “so, by extension, ANY web page should never be erased? Or do blogs enjoy some sort of special exempt status?”

I agree, Robert’s position on this is silly. The ultimate extension is to do away with all web content that is not like a Wiki, with all changes logged and infinite rollback.

Where are all blog entries where Robert made a mistake and then subsequently updated them out of existence? I probably have blog entries that link to some of these entries, and now my blog entries wont make any sense. Boo hoo!

I do think that if you are working at a company (large or small) and suspect that you are not going to be employed there for life, your best bet is to blog somewhere where you are in control of the content. That’s just common sense isn’t it?

If you blog for a company, with their permission, on their web site then like anything else you do in a work environment that is their content to do with as they wish. If you think otherwise you had better go back and check those documents you signed when you went to work there. maybe you are important enough that they will give you a special exemption from what is standard corporate policy just about everywhere (good luck with that!)

Based on the comment posted there by a current IBMer though I have a feeling they would give him his content to archive and re-link on his current blog if he wished. there didn’t seem to be any malice here.

I would have felt bad for IBM if Dons blog had been vibrant and included any really interesting content… but really, storm in a teacup!

Process over people dot com anyone?

Don’s blog is backup…the truth is getting it boots on.

http://www-03.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/donferguson

As Bjorn mentioned, Chris Barger explained the situation on Simon’s blog.

Robert, did you contact IBM to get the facts before passing judgment on our ethics (“Shame on IBM”)?

In the future, if you decide to check facts first, just ping someone like Chris Barger and I’m sure he’ll be glad to help you out.

@Bill: Very high moral tone, but there was none of that in the missing blog and that was plenty of data. When you delete a blogger like that (“temporary redirect to nothing”, sorry) you can expect the backlash. It’s happened before, so it really shouldn’t have come as a surprise. And while IBM is clearly treating blogs as PR and amrketing to be managed by PR folk, that’s not necessarily how others see them.

Simon,

To me, asking someone to get the facts before rendering judgment isn’t a matter of morality – it’s just common sense – it improves the signal-to-noise ratio.

If you feel that you had adequate facts to come to the conclusions that you did, then I’ll just have to respectfully disagree with you.

As to your statement “And while IBM is clearly treating blogs as PR and marketing to be managed by PR folk”, what do you base *that* on?

Look at my IBM blog – I rarely even talk about IBM!
http://www-03.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/BillHiggins