LiveJournal, eat your heart out.

July 22, 2003

Dear Diary -- Good news! Saddam Hussein's evil sons are maybe probably dead. Karl was busy tryin ta create a WMD distraction, but they saved us the trouble.

Everyone's real excited about the new write to President Bush email system. I'm not sure why -- it's not like anyone ever reads that stuff. Public email is almost as boring as intelligence reports.

Strictly parody, by Maeleine Kane. You gotta like your politics left of center to find it funny. 

I like the idea of elected officials blogging their days. Even if only to annotate their calendars. Transparency is hard, and mostly sterile. Blogging would open up an elected official's office, values, and issues with a human voice.

Lilia Efimova asks (in response to Martin Roell):

Q. Are there enough bloggers looking for a job?

If bloggers are typical of the population, they change jobs every four years. An active job search takes two to four months. So at any given time 7-8% of the people are both out of work and looking for it. Many people are passive job seekers, not hitting the job boards but open to suggestions, keeping their ears open. If there are 3 million active bloggers, 225,000 are now looking for work. 

1 million career-minded bloggers by Q1-2005. Assume active blogcount will grow to 9-12 million people in the next 18 months; AOL, TypePad, intranet, iMode, and either Yahoo! or MSN turning on blogservers.

Q. Are there enough companies open enough to hire someone who blogs and most likely will continue blogging?

This is really two questions:

• Are there companies that view blogging as risky, a bad thing?
• Are there companies that value blogging?

Blogging as Risk.

Few HR people have heard of blogs. Same with corporate counsel. Even CIOs are just learning about blogs and wikis.

When this changes, look to email's history. It was feared and tightly controlled at first. Managers wanted to approve and inspect messages. Lots of rules came down on accepted use. Do you remember workshops on "how to use email"? Eventually, it became treated like the telephone, but with a record.  

Blogging provokes the same concerns, conversations, and reactions. Then it will just be one more tool to be used for good and evil.

Blogging as Reward.

Companies have always hired people who are prominent in their profession and visible in their communities. Blogging is fundamentally no different than appearing on local news television, writing for trade publications, or joining industry organizations. Some firms even pay bonuses for positive publicity.

Blogging demonstrates ability and willingness to communicate. A prized characteristic.

When blogging becomes more mainstream, management and human capital professionals will exploit it. klogging reveals sources of information, areas of interest, and professional networks. All valued when fitting work to the workforce, assessing performance, and measuring social and intellectual capital.

Lilia and Martin keep asking good questions!