1. Jon Garfunkel on January 1, 2006 11:40 PM writes...

Ok, your list is still a novelty. Merely having a blog does not guarantee what customers likely want with a corporate website: answers to their questions, as part of an effective dialogue.

Have a read at John Cass's review of GM's blog. This quote stands out: "I’ve queried a few customers who posted comments on the GM Blog about their experience with the blog and all have been disappointed with the response." If you set up a blog because it's all about "the conversation" and then don't have the conversation, well, what's the point?

Some time ago I had a question for another large company, Google, about one of their bookmarklet API's-- but their blog would not give me a place to post where others may read it. I'm sure if I found the appropriate mailing list or some other channel I might have. But the blog did not solve the problem.

Now suppose there were such a system which would serve the purposes not of marketing, but of answering questions and building dialogues, and we chose to call that a civ. And we wouldn't be content to check whether the company had a civ or not, but it would report how many customers were able to have effective dialogues; how many got their problems solved. You want leading indicators? We don't even have MTTR reports or Six Sigma valuations in the F500 (last I checked). That's a scandal.

The Corante Many2Many mindset is that a blog automatically makes conversations happen, but it's just as easy for a company or a politician or pundit to set up a blog and pretend to listen. I suppose it will take another hundred or so Fortune 500 blogs to realize this, and say, ok, you've sold us this, now what?

2. Ross Mayfield on January 3, 2006 1:58 AM writes...

Here's my mindset.

Reality is that the F500 are listening intently to what is not on their blog. The tools are here. Now they are trying to determine if they can enter the conversation.

Problem is, there is little data. There is no source for who is in, at a certain level. That's what the wiki is for.

Being a wiki, it goes beyond the binary mindset. Each company page is a chance to provide a richer account on if their blog is effective, or not.

So, you have what you want, a place where you can engage them in conversation.

Do so gently, as we all should, not to understand their mindset, but ours.

3. Jon Garfunkel on January 3, 2006 2:29 AM writes...

So you are telling me that the wiki (the one hosted by SocialText) will be updated by particular companies, and that they will update only theirs, with honest data, and furthermore this will be a place where I can engage them in conversation? That's a long supposition.

You are still set on "blog" and "wiki" being the only tools. I recall discussing this with you in March. These will ultimately be seen as the small steps towards a complete CMS system. Not my insight, but Rebecca Blood's.

Also, I love this assessment from an analyst/consultant in my company's field:
"Thirdly, anybody who works for a vendor and has something interesting to say is probably too busy doing other things, like building the product, to spend much time blogging."

4. David Berger on January 4, 2006 11:50 AM writes...

I see IBM in the Wiki, but not on your list here. We're blogging extensively - dozens of IBM-hosted external blogs, and thousands of internal blogs.

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs

5. David Kline on January 4, 2006 4:27 PM writes...

I was the writer Wired hired to do an article on Chris's proposition that companies that blog tend to have suffered lower share price performance than those that don't blog -- suggesting that companies blog usually only when they're in trouble.

While Chris notes lower one-year share performance for F500 companies that blog vs. those that don't, statistically this is no more relevant, as Sun's Jonathan Schwartz told me, than "the share price performance of firms whose CEO's answer their own email vs. those that don't."

The problem is that the percentage of F500 companies that blog is too small, the time period looked at in share performance to short, and the number of firms like IBM and Sun who clearly blog because they're enmeshed in network culture and not because they're in trouble too largeb to lend any real support (as yet) to Chris's original supposition.

The five year data on share performance -- and especially their 5-year performance as against industry averages -- makes even less of a case that share price is (as yet) any real indicator of whether or not a company blogs.

True, there are a number of firms that started blogging clearly because they were suffering image problems that their traditional PR methods failed to redress -- Microsoft, GM and Boeing are cases in point (although their share price numbers aren't necessarily among the worst).

But the same cannot be said for IBM and Sun, and in any event, no credible link can be made between blogging F500 firms and their share price performance.

That's just a fact.

If you want to read my piece on this issue, check out: http://www.blogrevolt.com/archives/2005/12/do_companies_st.htm

6. David Kline on January 4, 2006 4:35 PM writes...

One other hardly-minor problem with Chris's supposition:

If you're trying to show that it's corporate malaise that induces companies to blog, then you've got to look at their share price performance PRIOR to starting to blog, which is different for every company.

To say that GM's share price performance over the last year that it's blog has been in existence is down 29% tells us NOTHING about what induced it to decide to start blogging in the first place (the decision was made 15 months ago).

If you want to make any correlation between the last year's share price performance and GM's blogging efforts -- and it would be foolish to do so -- you could only conclude that blogging had hurt the company.

But in fact, as I note in my "First Year Report for GM's Blog" at http://www.blogrevolt.com/archives/2005/12/gms_blogging_ex.htm, there's no evidence that it has hurt the company and more than a little evidence that it has helped GM -- at least in the image and PR arenas.

7. Jon Garfunkel on January 4, 2006 10:43 PM writes...

David-- wow, thanks for bringing some solid insight to this discussion.

8. Courtney Gidts on April 8, 2006 10:59 PM writes...

I've managed to save up roughly $40680 in my bank account, but I'm not sure if I should buy a house or not. Do you think the market is stable or do you think that home prices will decrease by a lot?

9. google pr main on May 10, 2006 8:19 PM writes...

hello! http://www.areaseo.com/contacts/ google pr. Web Site Analysis, SE marketing, High Rankings. From google pr .

10. hbmlh5z@google.com on May 10, 2006 8:20 PM writes...

online directory main

11. Pozycjonowanie on October 20, 2006 7:14 AM writes...

David-- wow, thanks for bringing some solid insight to this discussion.

12. Keith Back on October 31, 2006 9:00 PM writes...

dfqrx

13. Francisco Yanez on November 1, 2006 2:25 AM writes...

lwgqchme

14. adatto cowgirl on November 29, 2006 3:42 PM writes...

Congratulations. Great site

15. regno anale on December 7, 2006 12:20 PM writes...

anale

16. sentimento fighetta merda on December 7, 2006 12:21 PM writes...

sentimento

17. faint asiatiche sex on December 7, 2006 12:22 PM writes...

asiatiche

18. test salute benessere on December 9, 2006 1:37 PM writes...

benessere

19. piacente cowgirl inculate on December 9, 2006 1:39 PM writes...

piacente

20. alloggio toscana on December 9, 2006 1:43 PM writes...

toscana

21. New Articles on April 13, 2007 4:39 AM writes...

Great site, congratulations

22. Pizza sauce recipe on April 17, 2007 5:06 AM writes...

Very nice site, I am serious

23. Henry on May 5, 2007 10:48 AM writes...

Congratulations. Great site

24. Henry on May 5, 2007 10:51 AM writes...

Congratulations. Great site

25. Automaty sprzedajace on May 5, 2007 10:54 AM writes...

Congratulations. Great site