The Unbearable Blogness of Being

  • Article

A researcher has just completed a prelim analysis of Microsoft employee bloggers. Some interesting observations:

  • Less than 10% of Microsoft employees blog, either corp or private.
  • About 3 times as many employees blog externally as have blogs on blogs.technet.com and blogs.msdn.com. Mostly this is because the primary motivation for these bloggers is NOT business related, so they blog on spaces.msn.com or other non-corp blogs. Blogging in one place for/on both personal and business is a hassle. The majority has opted to go external and personal. Another way to look at this: the 2K bloggers on blogs.technet.com and blogs.msdn.com are only the tip of the Microsoft internal blogging iceberg. They are the dedicated ones who are tipped toward the business end of the spectrum.
  • Interesting point - most of the bloggers who are mostly in the "personal" and "external" camp do NOT blog at work.
  • Study subjects observed a correlation between an increase in blogging and a decrease of internal e-mail volumes.
  • Many bloggers report that they feel blogging enhances their job security:-)