Blogging Roller

Don "father of WebSphere" Ferguson left IBM for Microsoft, IBM deleted his developerWorks blog and bloggers started to sound the alarm (see below). IBM listened and quickly restored Don's old blog. And so we've learned another rule of business blogging: when one of your valued employee bloggers leaves the company -- leave their blog in place. Or better yet, do what Sun does and provide a planet-style blog aggregator to keep in touch with your former employees (see community.sun.com).

• James Governor: More on Don Ferguson.
  "Talking of beyond lame, apparently IBM has now deleted Don’s blog posts from IBM.com"
• James Snell: Anti-Pattern
  "hiding Don’s blog is a definite anti-pattern I emphatically do not support to any degree"
• Simon Phipps: Edited Out of History
  "IBM's former Fellow, 'Father of Websphere' Don Ferguson, is already in the process of being airbrushed out of history"
• Robert Scoble: IBM shows why employees shouldn’t blog on corporate sites
  "A kitten was just killed and IBM did it. Put the blogs back."
• James Robertson: Common Corporate Silliness
  "demonstrates how Sun gets modern PR in ways that a lot of companies just don't - like, say, IBM"