To blog or not to blog - That's no longer the question says CNN

According to CNN's article The rise and rise of corporate blogs, 'how to make one's voice heard above the crowd' is the new question that managers face today.  Apparently that's true for most everyone except company CEOs, only 10 percent of whom blog reports an Edelman survey.  The article also tackles the question of what makes a corporate blog successful, quoting Berkman fellow David Weinberger:

"Many corporations are afraid of weblogs because they're afraid of the sound of the human voice," said David Weinberger of Harvard's Berkman Center, quoted in the Edelman and Intelliseek study.  "But that voice -- the unfiltered sound of an actual person -- is actually the most important way of connecting with customers and partners."

After reading the article we checked in with Weinberger and asked him some more questions.

Question: The article says that only 10 percent of CEOs blog. Why don't CEOs blog as much as employees do?
David Weinberger: CEOs don't blog as much because, generally, they are more convinced that being in total control is a good thing.

Question: Why aren't there more customer-facing corporate blogs?
David Weinberger: Companies still too often see blogs primarily in terms of risk - someone will blab a secret or whine about a boss. In fact, blogs are ways for people who share interests to form relationships more human and intimate than what marketing departments can manage.

Question: Anything you'd like to add to the article?
David Weinberger: This article is further evidence that blogs are being accepted as a part of the corporate landscape. Of course, it's not yet certain that businesses will allow their bloggers enough leeway to be interesting. Ultimately, blogging's most important effect on business has less to do with communication and more to do with loosening control.

To hear more from Weinberger, please check out his blog.

We also checked in with Berkman's Executive Director John Palfrey because he blogs.  We asked him why and he told us "I blog for an almost endless number of reasons: to communicate with students, with colleagues at Harvard, and with people in our field who are further away, but also because I think it's important to participate in what I think is an extraordinarily important online activity that we're studying here at the Berkman Center."