Business blogging superstar Robert Scoble is leaving Microsoft and that means it's time to
warn folks again about those out-of-control bloggers, lament the
loss of our last example of a productive business blogger and worry about
the end of honest corporate blogging. Balderdash I say!
Are stars like Scoble of Microsoft or Schwartz of Sun the most important part of the corporate blogging value proposition? Stars speak to a broad audience and that's important, but the value of corporate blogging is that the "the people who are really doing the work tell the story to
the world, directly" as Tim Bray wrote in his July 2005 piece on
The New Public Relations. The thousands of employee bloggers and product-oriented bloggers that help build community around a company's products, services and initiatives are where the big value is -- especially for development platform companies like Microsoft and Sun.
Some good examples of product-oriented bloggers at Sun are
The Aquarium, a group blog devoted to Java EE,
Roumen Strobl, a Netbeans evangelist, and
Tor Norbye of Java Creator and
Java Posse podcast fame.