Tim Anderson

The internet is bad for secrets. Disgruntled employees who once shared their grievances with a few fellow drinkers at the bar can now find an audience of millions, thanks to the booming community of bloggers and their readers.

Sometimes there are unforeseen consequences. The internet is buzzing with stories about people who have been sacked after complaining about their jobs.

But some incidents have had a positive outcome. Late last year, the spouse of an employee at games giant Electronic Arts posted an eye-opening complaint about working conditions to a blog hosted by LiveJournal. This was corroborated by other EA staff and drew thousands of messages of support. A few weeks later, a leaked mail from the firm's head of human resources stated, "At the heart of the matter is a core truth: the work is getting harder, the tasks are more complex and the hours needed to accomplish them have become a burden... there are things we just need to fix."

There have been online public postings ever since the invention of Usenet newsgroups in 1979, and personal web sites also have a long history. So what's different about blogs? Blogs are online journals that are easy to author and they support syndication, allowing other web sites to aggregate their content, and enabling readers to keep track through online or offline blog clients. As a result, they are quickly picked up by search engines, and Google, in particular, is known to give blogs a high ranking.

According to a November survey by the Pew Internet and American Life project, seven percent of US internet users now write blogs, while 27 percent read them; figures for the UK will be similar. In December, Microsoft launched MSN Spaces, a free blogging service, and another sign of the blog's rise to prominence.

Let's be realistic. Most blog entries are dull and read by few people. Even so, there's no escaping the fact that blogs are now a significant part of a company's internet presence. It is no longer just the corporate web site.

Software firms such as Sun and Microsoft have picked up the potential of the medium, and use it to their advantage, encouraging staff to blog. This does not come so easily to companies that have a culture of secrecy. But frankly, maintaining secrecy in the blog era is nearly impossible.

Firms are just getting to grips with email privacy and appropriate use policies. Such policies should now be extended to blogs, before more people lose their jobs for breaching non-existent guidelines.

It is also wise to consider the PR impact of sackings and litigation and of acknowledging problems and trying to fix them. The bottom line is that blogs work best for firms with nothing to hide. That means they help to drive up standards, which has to be good news.

Like this story? Spread the news by clicking below:

 del.icio.us     Digg this     reddit!