Writing a blog about your employer is a risky business. Ask an XML programme manager for Microsoft named Joshua Allen. Fed up with reading bloggers bashing his company's products, Allen fought back by starting his own blog.
"In less than a month, [Allen's] boss received the first internal email demanding Allen be fired," Robert Scoble and Shel Israel write in Naked Conversations, a book about corporate blogging.
Two Boeing employees are also now acquainted with the professional risks poised by inserting blogs into the corporate communications culture. A pair of public relations managers for the company's defence sector, Stanley Holmes and Doug Cantwell, had developed a concept for an external blog called defensedialog.com, which aimed to create a hybrid channel for news, press releases and commentary about Boeing.
But both are the subject of an internal investigation after Cantwell appeared at the AUVSI Unmanned Systems convention as a journalist for defensedialog.com. Cantwell attended two press briefings hosted by Boeing's rivals, peppering rival executives with questions.
Cantwell acted improperly. By not identifying himself clearly as a Boeing employee, he opened Boeing to criticism of not observing ethical boundaries. If Cantwell was acting as a "rogue agent", he could have used his access to expose rival executives to public questions based on his insider knowledge. Or, he could have picked up valuable corporate intelligence based on nuances that may have escaped journalists not too privy to Boeing's competitive strategy.
It is possible to look at Cantwell's actions more charitably, as a creative - albeit buffoonish - attempt to "think out of the box" and defy the conventional approach to doing his job. Since Cantwell's job is above all about shaping perceptions about his employer, his actions, however, don't speak well of his intent.
Boeing is not the only company struggling with the challenge of adopting a tool as radical as social media. In the Microsoft example, Allen kept his job, but he never put himself in a position where he could be investigated for possibly misrepresenting himself.
The defensegdialogue.com episode will surely not be the last mistake made as companies attempt to navigate the promise and dangers of a new communication medium. But it is a good reminder that even in a blogging world, some of the old rules don't change.
Source: Flight International
