Simon Phipps has an example of why I’d rather not join corporate blog sites. Shame on IBM.
Blogs should never be erased — for any reason. That breaks the Web.
A kitten was just killed and IBM did it. Put the blogs back.
UPDATE: the kitten lives! The blog is back.
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Robert Scoble works at Fast Company.TV (title: Managing Director). Everything here, though, is his personal opinion and is not read or approved before it is posted. No warranties or other guarantees will be offered as to the quality of the opinions or anything else offered here.
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January 17th, 2007 at 12:10 am
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.
January 17th, 2007 at 12:25 am
Security: true, but an employee going somewhere else isn’t a lawsuit risk.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:11 am
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.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:14 am
Scoble,
Follow up on this and post why Coulter left your firm.
January 17th, 2007 at 4:26 am
[...] Via my Newsgator RSS aggregator, I noticed a Robert Scoble post about IBM and blogging on corporate sites. [...]
January 17th, 2007 at 5:12 am
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”
January 17th, 2007 at 6:03 am
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.
January 17th, 2007 at 9:04 am
“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?
January 17th, 2007 at 9:33 am
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.”
January 17th, 2007 at 9:56 am
Christopher Barger IBM has also left a comment on Simon Phipps website
January 17th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
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.
January 17th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
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?
January 17th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Don’s blog is backup…the truth is getting it boots on.
http://www-03.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/donferguson
January 17th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
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.
January 17th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
@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.
January 17th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
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
January 18th, 2007 at 8:27 am
[...] Scoble says IBM kills kittens. [...]
January 18th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
[...] posted about “Why employees shouldn’t blog on corporate sites”. He sites a great [...]
January 26th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
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January 27th, 2007 at 9:43 am
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