ITS Assignment Sec C Group21 Blogs at DrKW

1. Is the blogosphere chaotic? In what ways, is it, or is it not? The blogging world was evolving rapidly in 2005 and there were close to 9 million blogs with 40000 new ones going online each day. Several companies hosted blogs at no cost to users and free browser-based software that let people write blogs and add posts in mixed text, links, photos, sound files and other media. This helped blogosphere growing tremendously. Given the volume and ease of writing blogs, there was very likelihood of it becoming chaotic to administer. Few problems were observed in the beginning and these are: Maintaining the huge volume in the specific domains. As participants were finding it difficult to keep up with all the new content. Authenticity of the blogs was also an issue as anyone can write and in turn led to doubt of reliable and accurate information

But with the advent of various technological supports Blogosphere managed the typical problems and made it less chaotic. It provided the user with the required information and update on any posts with the help of a tool known as RSS (really simple syndication). Now users were using the software called RSS aggregator to collect the headlines from all the blogs and the websites they were interested in. Various websites and search engines were devoted to tracking the blogosphere which also made the life simpler for the users. The notifications usually consisted a headline that linked to the full post. Blogs were grouped together as per the tone of the writing or the subject for example financial blogs, technical blogs etc. This kind of compartmentalization of the volume helped users in saving time and provided them the options (blogs) in the domain they were interested in.

So overall we could say the technology systems (support systems) helped blogosphere becoming more organized and arranged as far as blogs are concerned. They were quite helpful in providing the key benefits (mentioned above) to users. This way blogosphere was not chaotic. 2. Should Rangaswamy initiate externally facing blogs? Who, if anyone, should be encouraged to create an external blog? Initating external blogging by all the employees looks promising for the company. But the risk involved in having anyone from the company employees writing external blogs can unintentionally land the company in unnecessary trouble. There is a great chance that some

confidential information going out may cause problems for the company legally, financially as well as harm the brand image. Rangaswamy can still initiate external blogging but limited by a subset of selected employees. This subset may include the members of the senior management (like the CEO, Head of regions) employees having high ratings as internal bloggers and considered to be the best in their respective fields. This subset will be solely responsible for the content of the blogs and see to it that nothing inappropriate will be put up. Advantages form external blogging: It will facilitate a healthy discussion between senior management, Sales personnel and market analysts and the clients/customers. Thus educating the clients about the current situations and future expectations. Through channel having international reach. It will provide the senior management, Sales personnel and market analysts with the point of view of a client and vice-versa facilitating a better understanding of the markets needs eventually improving customer satisfaction. Having representative of the senior management and experts of the field writing blogs will portray transparency and interactiveness for the prospective and existing clients. Giving a positive image of the company The If your blog is hosted on the same domain as the Web site, then it will attract more traffic that migrates into the rest of your web site improving reach of the company into the market.

To ensure the above advantages the subset of employees selected will have to ensure certain fundamental rules like Take care that no confidential information is leaked. The statements made must be backed by solid proofs and expert knowledge They must always remember they are speaking for the company and any wrong statements will directly affect the company and its Brand image. Also to maintain official and expert look for the blogs the selected employees should use same pattern for the blogs.

3. Can an internally facing Wiki serve the same purpose as internal blogs? Internally facing Wiki and internal blogs do have some common characteristics in terms of the purpose they fulfill. But there are significant differences between these two and hence Wiki cannot serve the purpose of internal blogs. Following are the points of similarity among these two:

In both the cases users can express their views about the topic covered/written Both serve the purpose of sharing information with the employees. These could be considered as the source of knowledge for any issues like technical, financial etc. Both allow the users to discuss or express their opinions

However the following key differences will justify our stand more clearly: Blogs are generally written by single person whereas information/articles on wiki could be the output of various employees. Blogs express individual opinions which are unbiased whereas Wiki usually have things like company policy description and some reforms etc. which usually convey the common message carrying the affirmation from the various authority. For example the new policy published on the wiki could be the outcome of the various meeting held previously among the senior management. Hence we can say wiki could have information/article published by group of employees or certain members of particular discipline. For instance Trading department publishing the new strategies on the wiki which could be used for knowledge sharing and development. Blogs provide the opportunities to others to express their views on the authors opinion in written form whereas wiki being source of information leaves very small room for written discussion or opinions of others. Wiki usually has very formal content whereas blogs can be informal as they are the experiences, views and imaginations of the writer. The person writing the blogs has the complete freedom to write anything whereas Wiki might have some restrictive rules to publish. Wiki might also have supervisory committee that approves before publishing anything on it. Information on wiki could be considered more authentic as compared to blogs as usually not everyone in the organization is allowed to write on the wiki whereas blogs do not have such limitations and hence doubts of its correctness cannot be ignored.

With respect to above arguments, none of these i.e. Wiki or Blogs, could serve the purpose of the other. Hence an organization must have these two platforms for knowledge sharing. It completely depends up on the organizations agenda behind these. If organization needs more sharing of the information then it must have both of these.