Unplugged - Blogging in a Tethered World

This weekend I happened to be emailing with a former colleague at Yahoo! and I mentioned that I had started a new blog.  His reaction  – “Great, I can hardly wait to hear your views now that you are unplugged”.

His comment reminded me of a discussion that I had with Jason Calacanis about a year ago while preparing for a session on Contextual Advertising (at Search Engine Strategies).  Jason was telling me that the problem with folks from Yahoo! (and other large companies) is that we generally don’t make very interesting presenters at conferences because our messaging is so scripted and we are really encouraged (by our PR folks) to not deviate from 3-4 key messages. 

Jason is very right (in this case).   I loved my PR (or corporate comunicatons) team members at Y!, but it is true that we were coached to be stay tight with our messaging.  Don’t mention the competitor’s name, don’t mention this specific term, focus on our “service”, don’t do that, etc.  This is of course all very understandable.  As leaders of programs that drive significant revenue and bottom line income, our statements can send positive or negative signals to analysts, shareholders, and lawyers.  But, to Jason’s point, this does limit our ability to really debate, share personal views and create truly an interesting presentation or discussion.

Corporate leaders have the same issue with personal blogs.  Their blogs are often used to sell, communicate, listen, engage, but rarely do these leaders choose to weigh in and debate on key issues facing the industry today.  The downside is too great with associated financial,  legal and public relation risks.  As a result, most leaders choose to not blog.  For example, Yahoo! is a leader in social media today – yet how many of the top 30 leaders / executives in the company actively blog and debate. Maybe one.  How unfortunate, especially with a company where the leadership team has so much to contribute.

So for now, I guess we are going to miss having this segment of the web community participate in our discussions – leaving the fun to the rest of us.

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[M2]

Naughty boy...

- M2