This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by James Robertson. Original Post: Blogging Benefits Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by James Robertson Latest Posts From Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants

I have to agree with Tim Bray here - the benefits of corporate blogging far, far outweigh any negatives you might think of. I've been running the Cincom Smalltalk blogs for over 2 years now; the community of bloggers has grown, and we're getting a lot of positive notice - notice that I don't think we could have gotten any other way. Here's how Tim puts it:

Despite all that, [corporate blogging obstacles] I think this is going to start happening, and the reasons are obvious. Today, in late 2004, there are exactly two companies in the world where blogging has gone wide-open: Sun and Microsoft. At both places, the impact has been overwhelmingly positive. Neither of us would consider going back for a second.

The existence of the Sun and Microsoft blogs is, every day, making our competitors' lives a little harder. This kind of competitive advantage generally just doesn't go unanswered; we are after all living in a free-enterprise system.

Most CEOs, and all good CEOs, are very outward-facing. They see what's going on, and they don't sit tight and let competitors maintain a competitive advantage. Especially when setting up enterprise blogging is easy and cheap.