tfosorciM.org

Could Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer blog?

I am not asking if Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer are capable of writing a blog. They are, by all available evidence, highly intelligent guys so they ought to be physically and intellectually capable of producing a blog. I am asking a question more like, "Will it ever be realistic for senior corporate executives like Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer to have a public blog?".

There might be a good case for senior executives to produce an intranet blog. Even there, certain issues might be problematic. But a public blog raises potential difficulties not least for investors and others in distinguishing a "personal remark" (can really senior executives have such things?) and an official corporate statement.

If Bill Gates started a "personal" public blog can anyone really pretend that it wouldn't be studied for all manner of hints about Microsoft and its future prospects?

Currently there seem to be few blogs written by corporate employees above the level which Robert Scoble describes as the "ants".

Eric Rudder, a Microsoft Senior Vice President is perhaps an exception. He began a blog apparently in May 2003, imaginatively called Eric Rudder�s Blog but he posted, so it seems, a total of two entries.

I can sympathise with the potential time pressures when trying to keep a blog populated with new entries - I only lasted 8 days before I missed my first day - but for a senior executive I suspect that other issues creep into the picture too.

For example, how human can a senior executive afford to be publicly? Can a senior VP afford to admit a mistake, or working too hard, or that his (assuming the VP is male) favourite hobby is something "touchy feely" rather than something thrusting and macho? Or that he has been neglecting his wife due to time pressures from the upcoming PDC? The list of potentially sensitive topics is endless.

It seem to me that the corporate blogger will, without major changes in corporate culture, almost inevitably be outside the upper echelons of the corporate power structure. The corporate blogger therefore resembles in some respects the court jester at the court of a mediaeval king. The court jester, like the corporate blogger, had licence to say things which go beyond what would be acceptable from someone in a more senior, a more official or a more credible position. One problem for the court jester, and perhaps in time it will be a problem for the corporate blogger too, is that nobody took anything he said seriously.