Blogs that serve the aims of internal communication are known as klogs, deriving this name from knowl- edge blogs. Klogs were created to support corporate
intranet, and their first aim is to manage at a distance
organizational projects. On these corporate blogs the power of such a mass medium in terms of data min- ing and records and information management is clear (Dearstyne, 2005). They allow users, under a shared
password, to update information and data on a specific
theme or project, also at a distance, from home, for example. In such a way, group decisions and work are facilitated, as they are based on peer interactions between colleagues and also horizontal interactions between employees and employer (Marshall, 2005).
future trends
Future trends in corporate blog research will probably focus on employees’ blogs, the other face of corporate blogs.
There are about 10 million bloggers among the American workforce (Employment Law Alliance, 2006). Most of these blogs contain information about the writer’s workplace. And it is quite common for some employees to use blogs to complain about work- ing conditions and even to spread damaging and false rumors about their corporations (Mercado-Kirkegaard, 2006; Wilburn Church, 2006).
doocing
Corporations seem unprepared to react to employees’ complaints in public blogs, and prefer to terminate em-
ployees. This type of termination is called “doocing” an employee, named after the www.dooce.com blog
owned by a worker who was fired in 2002 for writing
about her workplace (Mercado-Kirkegaard, 2006). Even if there have been many dooced employees (Boyd, 2005; Mercado-Kirkegaard, 2006), it is still a matter of discussion as to whether it is opportune or not, from the corporation’s point of view, to terminate an employee because of something said in a personal blog (Segal, 2005). On one hand the corporation stops a dangerous rumor, but on the other hand, it develops a new image of itself as “Big Brother.” In addition, both American and European laws do not help in these management issues, since doocing workers for activities
outside of office hours while using their own Pcs is still
often legally unclear (Mercado-Kirkegaard, 2006). Another interesting topic to develop in terms of corporate blog research concerns the way in which it
will be possible to construct a person-organization fit,
especially when travelling and telecommuting (Mar- shall, 2005) via different kinds of Weblogs and different blog uses, both personal and corporate.
conclusIon
We may conclude by saying that blogs will play an important part in the future of corporations, since they are primarly a relational marketing tool. They are gener- ally free from reference to singular products, and they prefer to chat with potential consumers, with the aim of constructing a positive corporate image. Thanks to
this flexibility and to the experiences they allow the
users to have (widening uses and pleasure for mass
media users), they can exert a deep influence on the
minds of potential users, in terms of both informative and affective pressure.
In addition, blogs can be used by corporations as data sources and archives (Facca & Lanzi, 2005; Todoroki, Konishi, & Inoue, 2006), serving also the aims of knowledge management. A corporation may exploit external blogs in order to collect information, which can be about a particular market, using them as a mass medium among others, or on potential and actual employees (Wilburn Church, 2006).
Finally, even if they are democracy symbols, blogs are becoming more and more at risk, since writing anything negative, false, or defamatory, about a cor- poration or an individual, or a competitor, may lead
to libel suits (Mercado-Kirkegaard, 2006), calling for additional computer law and security research.
references
Aaker, D., & Joachimsthaler, E. (2001). Brand leader- ship. Milano: Franco Angeli.
Blood, R. (2003). The Weblog handbook. Milano: Arnoldo Mondatori Editore.
Boyd, C. (2005). The price paid for blogging in Iran. BBC News 2005.
Cass J. (2004). What does corporate blogger have that corporate Web site doesn’t? Retrieved August 17, 2005, from http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/989021 Cortini, M. (2005). Il blog aziendale come nuovo strumento al servizio della comunicazione integrata. In M. Cortini (Ed.), Nuove prospettive in psicologia del marketing e della pubblicità (pp. 35-46). Milano:
Guerini Scientifica.
Dearstyne, B. W. (2005). Blogs: The new information revolution? Information Management Journal, 39(5), 38-44.
Edelson, E. (2005). Open-source blogs. Computer Fraud & Security, (June), 8-10.
Eirinaki, M., & Vazirgiannis, M. (2003). Web mining for Web personalization. ACM Transaction on Internet Technology, 3(1), 1-27.
Employment Law Alliance. (2006, February). Blog- ging and the American workplace. Employment Law Alliance Press Release.
Facca, F. M., & Lanzi, L. (2005). Mining interesting knowledge from Weblogs: A survey. Data & Knowledge Engineering, 53, 225-241.
Gili, G. (2005). La credibilità. Quando e perchè la comunicazione ha successo. Soveria Mannelli: Ru- bettino.
Habermann, J. (2005a). Analysis of the usage and value of Weblogs as a source of business news and information for information professionals and knowledge managers. Unpublished master’s thesis, Faculty for Information Science and Communications Studies, University of Applied Science, Cologne.
Habermann, J. (2005b). Analysis of the usage and value of Weblogs as a source of business news and informa- tion. Asian Chapter News, 5(3), 3-5.
Jensen, M. (2003). Emerging alternatives. A brief his- tory of Weblogs. Columbia Journalism Review, 42(3). Retrieved August, 1, 2004, from Communication and Mass Media Complete.
MacDougall, R. (2005). Identity, electronic ethos, and blogs. American Behavioral Scientist, 49, 575-599. Marshall, D. R. (2005). Bloggers in the workplace: They’re here! Labor & Employment Bulletin, (Sum- mer), 56-62.
McConnell, B. (2005). Blogosphere more useful than dangerous. HR News, (September 26), 12-15.
McIntosh, S. (2005). Blogs: Has their time finally
come—Or gone? Global Media & Communication, 1(3), 385-388.
Mercado-Kierkegaard, S. (2006). Blogs, lies and the doocing: The next hotbed of litigation? Computer Law & Security Report, 22, 127-136.
Rodgers, S., & Thorson, E. (2000). The interactive advertising model: How users perceive and process online ads. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 1(1), 22-33.
Segal, J. A. (2005). Beware bashing bloggers. HR Magazine, 50(6), 34-42.
Smith, S. (2005). In search of the blog economy. Econ- tent, 28(1/2), 24-29.
Todoroki, S., Konishi, T., & Inoue, S. (2006). Blog- based research notebook: Personal informatics work- bench for high-throughput experimentation. Applied Surface Science, 252, 2640-2645.
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ules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&s
id=2194
key terms
Corporate Blog: A new kind of corporate Web site, updated more than once a day, and designed to be com-
B
pletely interactive, in the sense that anybody can post a message on a blog without knowing html language. They are subdivided into corporate diaries, corporate
notebooks, corporate filters, plogs, and klogs. Corporate Diary: An attractive online diary, ed-
ited by a corporation, usually using a fictious narrator,
which has to depict a positive corporation image for consumers.
Corporate Filters: Special filters of Internet content
edited by a corporation; they are generally thematic,
constructed around a specific topic that identifies the
corporation itself for the consumer. The idea is to judge, and host links to, other blogs, Web sites and Internet material, related to the corporation’s core business.
Corporate Notebooks: Corporate blogs; very prag- matic and designed to support potential consumers in
each selling stage, from the choice of a specific product
to the post selling phase to the potential complaints phase. Generally their interface is quite poor and rigid
in order to be used without difficulty. Example: The
Scobleizer by Microsoft, where a Microsoft employee, Robert Scoble, is the blogger, a real person who answers peoples’ requests.
Doocing: Losing your job because of something you have put on an Internet Weblog.
Klogs: Corporate blogs that serve the aim of internal communication, deriving their name from knowledge blogs. They were created to support corporate intranet,
and their first aim is to manage at a distance organi- zational projects.
Plogs: Derive their name from personal blog and
are, literally, a specific kind of Weblog directed at a
unique target, with name and surname. They collect all
the useful information about a specific target (name,
surname, job, age, gender, etc.), and after having re- quested a login and a password, they construct a personal communication and a personal commercial offer.