January 10, 2006

More and more in the B2B sector, new business blogs are created almost daily. Pushed by the desire for new ways to interact between B2B companies and their customers, business leaders and sales executives are rapidly realizing the important advantages of blogs (Web logs).

In essence, as the number of Fortune 500 and large corporate blogs are rapidly increasing, it is worthwhile to have a central point from which to observe the proliferation of new B2B blogs and in just about any industry.

The Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki is still new and is soliciting additions to its list, which currently tracks Amazon.com, Avaya, Boeing, Cisco Systens, Dell, EDS, Ford, GM, HP, Honeywell, IBM, Microsoft, Motorola, Oracle, Sprint, Sun, Texas Instruments, Time Warner, and Viacom.

The reason blog tracking becomes particularly important in the business context is that a large company can have tens of thousands of employees (and perspectives).

The blog isn't a monolithic form of corporate communication; two bloggers at the same company can offer radically different kinds of information in different styles and formats.

Getting a high-level view of Fortune 500 blogs will allow interested observers to be able to test all kinds of observations and nascent speculation.

For example, Chris Anderson of Wired and others believe that blogging is something to which underperforming companies resort.

Blogger Hugh MacLeod, meanwhile, writes that "Blogging is all about ECO-logy. Branding is all about EGO-logy. The two are not compatible. Which is why brand-wimpy Microsoft has hundreds of bloggers [a well-known fact], and why you can get fired for blogging at uber-brand Apple [so I've been told]."

If you'd like to see more data upon which to base the unfolding blog debate, we encourage you to contribute to the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki list.

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