BusinessWeek: Fortune 500 blogging Wiki undercounts

I agree with Stephen Baker over on Blogspotting in a post entitled "Fortune 500 blogging wiki undercounts" that the Socialtext "Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki" seriously undercounts and underestimates the extent of blogging in the Fortune 500. To wit, BusinessWeek has a bunch of popular blogs, but they don't "count" for corporate parent McGraw-Hill.

I would also note that companies with RSS feeds for news, etc. are not counted as "blogging". That makes no sense.

It's annoying that Microsoft gets counted as blogging, but the senior execs don't blog.

There should also be some quality factors for blogs. In particular, to what extent are the corporate blogs truly conversations with readers as opposed to mostly one-way PR broadcasts.

Mr. Baker opines:

Imagine if someone tried to write a McGraw-Hill blog, covering the textbook business, magazines, trades, and financial ratings and info services. It would be a mess.

Yes, it would be a mess. I would note that the GM Fastlane blog is a real mess, too, since it attempts to be a one-size-fits-all blog when there are a lot of different constituencies out here in the blogosphere.

I would pick one nit with Mr. Baker on McGraw-Hill's lack of a blog... maybe their stock would perform better if they had some overall, corporate level bloggers and focused serious management attention on improving areas that they are afraid to blog about. GM's example tells us that blogging is a good thing, but that strategic planning and execution (of both blogging and the business itself) are critical. Granted, GM with blog cratered (and  and McGraw-Hill without blog has moved up semi-decently (+10% or so over the past year), but they could do much better and GM could do much, much better as well if they blogged more effectively. If GM's board told management thay had to blog about health care costs, pension issues, relations with Wall Street, executive compensation, etc., then maybe GM's management would now be ahead of the curve on those issues instead of mired in the swamp they currently inhabit.

I note that McGraw-Hill just announced that they were doing some restructuring and cutting 500 jobs, but no mention of that in the the Bloggspotting blog and there's no overall McGraw-Hill blog to consult. Oh well. By the way, I do appreciate Yahoo's free financial news service. Click that link above and you can read the full text of McGraw-Hill's press release. All the facts, without any editorializing by any "journalists" at Yahoo.

-- Jack Krupansky