Steve Rubel of micropersuasion
November 26, 2006 in blog, micropersuasion, steve+rubel
Steve Rubel of micropersuasion admits that he has lost his edge in his popular blog miropersuasion since he joined a big firm. Interesting to note is that his blog micropersuasion itself is supposed to be more of his personal possession that is why he took its brand (name and URL) with him when he left the previous company. However, I suspect the blogging has become so embedded into his professional life that now he acknowledges the influence by his employer, who is even more bigger and prestigious than his previous. It suggests that when you blog revealing your profession in public and blog related to your profession, you are more or less on behalf of your employer. It is quite understanable; and I’d sympathize with him.
Probably we will be seeing more and more blurring boundaries between corporate and individuals, if blogging were to be a part of economic activities.
technorati tags: steve+rubel, micropersuasion, blogging
I think that may be especially true in Japan.
First, the usual cultural sort of reasons where people often identify them with a company rather than a profession/skill-set that they happen to be temporarily deploying at a company.
Second, in market research, the new and very strict Japanese privacy protection laws are taken ultra-seriously. We have a full-time compliance officer who, among other things, monitors our personal blogs.
One guy mentioned the name of the name of a client for whom we do work around the world. This client is regularly featured in our own firm’s pitches and marketing material (outside of Japan) as a company with whom we have a good relationship (many $10m gets noticed).
It’s public knowledge – as in written-up in market research and advertising trade publications – that this company gives us a lot of money for projects around the world.
Anyway, this guy mentioned the name of the client with whom he had a long-standing relationship prior to joining our company. A privacy audit found a mention of this client and a recently completed and absolutely no-secret-about-it project on the guy’s website. He had to remove the reference on his website and then spend a day or two contacting Google and Yahoo to have any material in cache deleted.