The assignment is to read recent entries from “official corporate blogs” and continue to read them over the next two weeks. Choose 4 blogs from those listed below — or find other blogs of interest and follow those instead. Note that only “official” company blogs (including CEO blogs) count. No individual employee blogs (other than CEO's) should be considered. We’ll study those later in the semester.
Following is a list of organizations and their official blogs:
Google (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/)
Sun Microsystems (http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/)
Boeing (http://boeingblogs.com/randy/)
Stoneyfield Farms (http://stonyfield.typepad.com/bovine/)
Gartner (http://weblog.gartner.com/weblog/weblogindex.php)
Dell (http://direct2dell.com/one2one/default.aspx)
Southwest Airlines (http://blogsouthwest.com/)
Microsoft Internet Explorer (http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/)
Microsoft Windows Media Center (http://blog.mediacentersandbox.com/)
Kodak (http://1000words.kodak.com)
Netflix (http://blog.netflix.com)
Yahoo! (http://ycorpblog.com)
General Motors (http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/)
37Signals (http://www.37signals.com/svn/)
You can also look at a "crowdsourcing" attempt to compile a list of blogs for Fortune 500 Companies at:
Fortune 500 Business Blogs (http://www.socialtext.net/bizblogs/index.cgi)
For your written assignment, respond to the following questions in a Word document and submit to blackboard using the 'submit assignment' feature. There are no page limits but I would guess this will take no more than 3 pages for a proper response to all 5 questions. You can respond to each question separately for all blogs studied or you can write a general 'paper' on business blogs and answer the questions in your paper. The writing does not need to be formal like a term paper. You can continue to use the style you are developing as you post to your blogs. However, be sure to include an introduction paragraph and conclusion paragraph.
- Overall Similarities and Differences (What do the blogs you read have in common with each other? How are they different?)
- Blog Author(s) and Posting Frequency (Who is writing the blogs? How often do they post? Did they post during this two week period?)
- Comment Policy (Do they allow comments? Should they allow comments?)
- Attempted Goals and Success Rate (What are they trying to achieve by blogging? Do you think they are they succeeding?)
- Communication Mediums (In your opinion, which is better for this type of communication — a blog, a regular web site, or an email newsletter? Why?)