Works for Me: A blog by any name - CNET reviews

Works for Me: A blog by any name - CNET reviews
Rafe Needleman of CNET posted a review of blogs today. It’s interesting how many times the same thinks come up – I guess most of us don’t do much original research. He starts with an intro based on the recent BusinessWeek article on blogs, which has recognized blogging as a trend that will "change your business. He then moves into a listing of his blog taxonomy. I’ve quoted liberally below.

With my involvement in the forthcoming ECM (Enterprise Content Management Blog) sponsored by Open Text, I’ve been looking into blogs, as noted in earlier posts. Needleman’s taxonomy would accommodate what we are doing is a blend of a traditional ‘diary’ blog, with elements of a group-grope blog. As a vendor of ECM software, we already sell a number of project and collaboration support tools. Needleman’s describes wikis as, “extremely powerful new tools for business collaboration.” We don’t yet include wikis in our collaboration suite, but we do have blogs in our Community of Practice software. Needleman mentions Socailtext as a vendor of commercial wiki. We do have a function tha is awfully close – a web based text file editor (also does Word formats) that allows people to edit and post new versions (provided they have permissions ot do so).

The diary blog
“This is the original blog type, in which one or a very small number of authors frequently post comments or thoughts on a site, with the newest posts at the top of the page and the older ones getting pushed down.” The usual mention is Robert Scoble, who writes the Scobleizer. Needleman mention the “…recruiting bloggers to pitch your product, which Microsoft is also doing, undermines the positive power of blogging” and the “…character blog, sometimes called the fake blog. These are attributed to fictional people. For example, see the the Lincoln Fry blog that was part of McDonalds Super Bowl ad program, and the Captain Morgan Spiced Rum blog, by the captain himself. Think of these as commercials in blog form.”

The project blog
“Many small software companies are starting blogs based on their products. If you're running a growing business, a project blog is a great way to keep your most loyal customers up to speed with your progress. For examples, see Intuit's blog and FeedBurner's blog.”

The grok blog
“This is a blog that points to, and comments on, media stories. I call it a grok because this was the format of Media Grok, the ongoing critique of the media launched by the Industry Standard in the Internet bubble.” He mentions “…popular gadget blogs Engadget and Gizmodo, for example. Both were built on the grok model, although they are doing more original reporting as they mature.”

The group-grope blog
“All industries are small. In any industry, there is a cadre of thought leaders who are inquisitive and outspoken and who become smarter the more they interact with others. Blogs that multiple people post can serve as an ongoing trade conference. One example is AlwaysOn...”

The wiki
“A wiki is collaborative Web site. It is not, strictly speaking, a blog at all, but wikis have bloglike elements: they are easy to update, and most are written in an informal style. Wikis are also extremely powerful new tools for business collaboration. You can get a bunch of people up and running on wiki in a fraction of the time it would take to set up almost any other groupware application, and wiki users can organize their online work spaces in the ways that make sense to them--not to some harried IT staff.

Wikis can tend to become rather disorganized after a while, but for keeping teams up-to-date on active projects, they really can't be beat. (I'm using one my own editorial and product management team, and I think it's great so far.)

The most famous wiki is the collaborative encyclopedia, the Wikipedia. For collaborative work spaces, there are several companies you can turn to, including the pioneer Socialte