By Will Sturgeon, 10 February 2005 10:25
NEWS Despite huge growth in the blog phenomenon and high profile stories about companies undone by blogging staff there is still a 'why all the fuss?' mindset among IT professionals.
According to a recent silicon.com poll, 36.3 per cent of respondents see the whole blogging trend as being lost on them. A further 17.2 per cent of respondents believe blogs are merely the domain of the egotistical, where individuals can write about themselves, irrespective of whether or not anybody else cares.
A further 10.6 per cent of respondents said they weren't even familiar with the blogging concept while 5.6 per cent warned the contents of the average blogs are quite likely to be libellous.
Certainly the rise of the blog hasn't been without controversy. Earlier this year a Waterstone's employee was sacked by the bookstore for airing some his workplace grievances in his blog.
Delta Airlines and more recently Google have also taken similar action.
But while the majority were less than enthused there does appear to be growing interest in the medium with 5.6 per cent respondents calling blogs the future of web publishing and 24.6 per cent of respondents saying they are a source of independent comment.
Amazon.com this morning also announced its intention to get involved with the blog phenomenon with an investment in 43 Things.
Plus: See silicon.com's new Cheat Sheet on blogging.
Comments
There are 4 comments. Join the discussion
1. Rory
Still dont know what all the fuss is about. Can anyone post an example web site so we can have a look to see what people are writing and what is deemed to be a "sackable" offence!
2. anonymous
Everyone has an opinion. The ramblings of an anonymous blogger is no more interesting than anyone chosen at random off the street. Face it, blogging is just more 'Talk Radio' drivel on a different medium.
3. Adrian Lee
When a blog is basically just a journal for someone to write about their life in, yeah, it's nothing special. But there are also a huge number of business blogs and topical blogs of interest to people in those areas.
Yahoo! has a blog, Google has a blog, Microsoft has a blog. Employee's from those companies have blogs. There are more than enough web designers/developer blogging and sharing their knowledge, experiments, tips, and generally discussing the best way to go about things.
Are those kinds of things not useful to people in those kinds of areas?
I'm toying with the idea of setting up a blog for the company I work for, so we can help inform our customers, and potential customers of various bits of news very easily. Once setup, other people in the company can very easily update wit and information, without always having to come through me to get it published on the web site.
Blogging is also one of the main ways you can see the internet in action in the best way possible. Bloggers are notorious for linking to each other, and too alsorts of other places. Not like most sites who now will often only link to a site if that site links back, or pays them for it! With blogs, you can actually browse the web again.
4. Adam
Opinion without context is meaningless.
Without an understanding of an individual's motivations, integrity and personality it will always be impossible to assign any degree of relevance to anything you read in a blog.
A stranger's unvalidated opinion? Why would I care?