***KnEeKo’S aRt ExPeDiTiOn***

Gusto ko lamang maibahagi sa inyo ito, kaya pagdating ko kanina sa opisina habang wala pa ang boss ko, search ko ulit at nasilayan ko rin sa wakas. Eto po ang nilalaman…

Blog busters

It was Bridget Jones’s Diary that did it. Jennifer Grey, a thirtysomething singleton from Birmingham with a gift for comical penmanship, was inspired and started writing her own internet diary, or blog.

But the last laugh was on her. Grey (not her real name) soon realised that if she did not stop, it would only be a matter of time before her boss - who was referred to in a less than savoury way in the blogosphere - found out. “I felt there was a very real chance I’d lose my job, and it was a risk I couldn’t take,” she says.

Bloggers have learned this lesson the hard way. Last week a lawsuit was brought against a former Senate aide whose explicit short-lived blog about relations with Washington officials titillated beltway political hounds a couple of years ago. Jessica Cutler is being sued for invasion of privacy by a former legal counsel to an Ohio Republican senator. She was sacked in 2004, once her diary had featured on a popular Washington gossip blog.

Other workers in the US have lost their jobs owing to blogs. Delta Airlines gave the boot to flight attendant Ellen Simonetti - better known as the Queen of the Sky - for posting “inappropriate” pictures of herself in her uniform on her blog. At Google, a young programmer started blogging just a few days into his new job, griping that the internet giant’s health plan was less than generous and that the free food on offer was merely an enticement to work past dinner time.

Back to UK, employers are responding in a similar way. Probably the best-known example is the bookshop chain Waterstones. Last year Joe Gordon was dismissed for describing his employers as Bastardones and his manager as Evil Boss.

But far from quashing people’s desire to log details of their everyday lives, including work, over the web, it appears to be having the opposite effect. There are currently almost 30m blogs, according to the blogging website technorati.com, and about 70,000 more appear every day. Unlike Grey, people are throwing caution to the wind and spilling all sorts of beans about their social and work lives.

In fact, Mark Rogers, the chief executive of blog-monitoring firm Market Sentinel, says it is because blogs are so unlike the conventional media that they have become so popular.

“You can share stuff about everyday lives that you don’t get to do in the media and also, blogs are not static but constantly updated,” he says. “There’s also the fact that you can respond to many blogs, which creates a kind of forum.”

Jeff Jarvis, a media consultant and avid blogger, recently reported a further reason for their appeal: “In this age, when every message is manufactured, metered, spun and filtered, that is precisely what makes blogs so refreshing: their humanity.”

Employers tend to be less positive about blogging. Many are concerned about employees revealing confidential information, while other are worried about people saying inappropriate things about their coworkers or bosses.

“Employee bloggers sometimes shoot from the hip, especially because of the informal nature of blogging,” says Ben Wilmott at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. “You could even get employees making racist or sexist comments about their workplace in their blog and that doesn’t look good for the employer.”

Many organisations are responding by banning staff from blogging, or at least mentioning the employer’s name or any identifying details in their blogs. But Wilmott believes this could be counterproductive.

“I think there is a balance employers have to tread between respecting employee freedoms and privacy and protecting the interests of the business,” he says. “If employers go too far down the line of Big Brother, we know from research that employees are less likely to feel positively about a company.”

He suggests a company blogging policy should solve any potential problems. IBM is among those that has a blogging code of conduct. “If you publish a blog, use a disclaimer,” is one of the computing firm’s 10 guidelines.

But some bloggers object to what they believe are less than fair policies. What is more, as one blogger says of the Metropolitan police’s policy, it can be completely futile if you deliberately choose - as many bloggers do - to remain anonymous. “Attempting to issue guidelines on the matter is akin to a raging bull in a china shop,” she says.

Microsoft takes the opposite stance. It encourages its staff to blog, not least because many of the blogs promote company products. For example, Darren Strange, who is responsible for the next version of Microsoft Office, uses his blog to keep people up to date on the latest developments. Like many people in the “tech” world - and increasingly in other sectors - he uses his blog purely in a work capacity.

“Blogging is an evolving medium, a great way to communicate with a wider audience, and we are lucky that some of the most prominent bloggers in the world are based at Microsoft,” says a Microsoft spokeswoman.

Other organisations are also recognising that blogs are not necessarily bad news and can even be turned into an opportunity. Take the London Ambulance Service, which has no objections to two diaries written by an ambulance driver and dispatcher. It even allows blogging sites, such as Random Acts of Reality and Nee Naw, to contain some gentle digs at policy because the majority of the content creates better understanding of what the ambulance service actually does.

Cadbury-Schweppes encourages its new graduate employees to blog about their experiences of work to act as a recruitment tool. “While we have a really strong brand, most people don’t know what’s involved in our everyday jobs,” says Gill McCall, an HR graduate who joined the firm last year.

Even bosses are getting in on the act, with some having set up internal blogs as an extension of their intranet. Steve Cody is the CEO of communications firm Peppercom. He says his blog entries attract comment from staff in both his company’s American and European offices, thereby helping to create a sense of community.

“I think blogging is a beautiful way to break down any perceived barriers between the corner office and the daily employees,” he says. “We have plenty of people blogging personally too, which I’m not remotely concerned about. If you treat your staff well, there’s no reason to think they’ll say bad things about you.”

“Writing a witty web diary of your working life might appeal, but make sure your boss approves - or keep it anonymous.” - Kate Hilpern

Kaya dapat maging alerto ako hehe. Mahirap na mawalan ng trabaho. Ingat mga tropang bloggers na nagnanakaw ng oras sa trabaho. Ooopps kasama pala ako dun, wheeww.

Source: Arab News,The Guardian

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 12th, 2006 at 6:33 pm and is filed under FrIeNdS, TeChNoLoGy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.