I read with dismay an article in today’s local newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. (Since the AJC requires registration to access news stories on their site, I will save you the trouble of using bugmenot.com and reproduce the story at the bottom of this post.)
Basically, the nationwide intenet service provider Earthlink, based here in Atlanta, has decided to let its employees write a series of articles about security and such, and call it a blog.
I got a bit angry about this. I think my e-mail response (the “blog” doesn’t allow comments) says it best.
Dear Sir,
In history, there have been many times when the true meaning of a term has gotten lost in the public hype. The term “hacker” is a great example. It used to be a fairly honorable title, but then in the late 1980s the media began to use it in connection with malicious meddlers and petty criminals. Suddenly, no one wanted to be a hacker anymore. The meaning of the word was forever changed.
You’re doing the same thing to the term “Blog”. Because you work for a company in the internet business, it’s disappointing that you’ve completely failed to understand the meaning of the term, and are now applying it to a collection of support articles on a corporate web site.
The term “blog” is a contraction of the words “Web Log”. A log is a record of events … loosely, a chronicle of one’s daily life, personal thoughts, ramblings, and other miscellaneous output. Some blogs do have a particular topic, but remain the work of one individual, not a corporate entity.
“protectionblog.net” is not a blog. If you want to write some support articles, or an advice column, why not simply call it that rather than misusing the term “blog” in a way that will further destroy (or at least badly blur) it’s existing meaning. Just because a word has some popular appeal does not give anyone license to redefine it to their own end.
If you’d like to educate yourself about what a blog truly is, rather than trying to redefine the term to your own end, you might want to look at some examples. www.simong.org is fairly representative of what a true blog is. Mine is at www.kd4dcy.net/blog also.
Respectfully,
Scott Johnson
Am I overreacting? I really think that I’m not. I haven’t been blogging, or even reading blogs, as often as some have, but in those months I think I’ve come to understand quite well what a blog is. The AJC itself has been guilty of creating public internet forums on certain issues and labeling them “Blogs” … which they also clearly are not. A good blog comes from the heart, or at least from the gut. A corporation has neither of those assets. A blog is personal … public discussions about news stories aren’t.
I really would hate to see the term “Blog” become just one more form of corporate bullshit.
Here’s the story.
EarthLink enters blogging universe
By BILL HUSTED
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 01/18/05Atlanta-based EarthLink today joins the growing universe of Web bloggers.
The Internet provider has created a corporate blog, updated regularly by employees on the company’s Web site, to offer tips for dealing with viruses, spyware and computer scams. It’s part of the Atlanta company’s effort to position itself as more user-friendly than rivals on security issues.
“I’m sure there are a few of you reading this, rolling your eyes, thinking, ‘Oh great, here’s just another opportunity for EarthLink to market its products to us,’ ” EarthLink, the blogger, says in one its first online journal entries.
Blogs began as daily — often personal — journals on the Web. But increasingly, companies use blogs, hoping the personal touch will make their messages more believable than ads and news releases.
So when Stephen Currie, a product management director at EarthLink, wrote that blog entry — worrying about an eye-rolling reaction from readers — he was giving voice to the challenge faced by corporate blogs.
Al Ries, an Atlanta-based marketing consultant, rolled his own eyes when he read another entry written by Currie.
“The EarthLink blog looks like it’s headed in exactly the wrong direction,” Ries said. “One sentence sets the tone: ‘We’ve got a great team of folks here at the company, and we’ve made Internet security and protection a priority for our product development.’ ”
He added, “Sure, if a commercial blog is written with some humility and some focus on the receiver of the message rather than the sender, some commercial blogs can be informal, interesting and loaded with helpful information. But history suggests it won’t happen.”
Les Seagraves, chief privacy officer at EarthLink, will be the online publication’s executive editor.
He realizes “it will be difficult to be a pure corporate blog but appear to be objective. I think we’re going to be conscious of not just touting our own products all the time.”
The blog can be reached from the main EarthLink Web page at www.earthlink.net or at www.protectionblog.net.
The idea came from EarthLink’s public relations department because of worries that news was traveling faster on blogs than in conventional media.
Corporate blogs are “definitely a trend,” said Steve Rubel, vice president of client services at New York City-based PR firm CooperKatz & Co. Rubel is a blogger himself. His blog, Micro Persuasion, tracks how blogs are changing public relations.
“The days of the controlled message by corporations are coming to an end,” he said. “But blogs have to be human. They are not a place for corporate-speak or to put up your press releases. That’s not going to work.”