Over the past five to seven years the growth of corporate blogging in relation to the total growth of blogs has been astounding. Companies have realized the true potential of them and large companies turn to them in order to communicate effectively to the consumer, whether through the use of employees’ personal blogs, a site-wide blog network, or through a main company blog. We have seen before the effects of blogging for a company, the firing of employees for their thoughts about the company, and again we are seeing a change in the way companies manage their employees’ blogs through the use of blogging policies.

Patent Troll Tracker, a blog begun last May by Cisco employee Rick Frankel, in which he discusses various work-related topics such as patents and intellectual property, as well as Cisco-related legal matters. The problem (and possible litigation) arose when he revealed his identity on February 23, 2008. His affiliation with Cisco led
two Texas patent attorneys - T. John Ward, Jr. and Eric Albritton to file defamation actions in state court against both Cisco and Frankel.

On his blog, he wrote a post (or series of posts) which tarnished the company of their good names and degraded a patent case one of their clients had filed against Cisco.

Cisco’s current blogging policy states that common sense should be a prevailing factor in employees’ blogs and that it allows blogging, but has reorganized their policy, stating that if you write about the company’s business or any information regarding the company which could potentially offend another party, you must not conceal your identity and that you are posting on the stance of your own views and not those of Cisco.

In terms of other company blogging policies, Sun Microsystems’ policy states that blogs should not contain a large amount of information that wouldn’t normally be seen by the public, and doesn’t require bloggers to include the fact taht they work for Sun.

Google and Yahoo have policies that do not require an employee to include their affiliation with the company, but once again, that they are advised not to post non-public information.

Dell and IBM have stricter policies, with Dell’s policy stating that they disclose their affiliation with the company whenever “they do any sort of blogging, social networking, Wikipedia entry-editing, or other online activities related to or on behalf of the company”.

After suing Cisco, the Troll Tracker blog was set to “invite only”, but will continue, and the Cisco blogging policy was changed in an announcement on their official blog. The new policy affects all 63,000 employees.

The new policy and statement released is as follows:

The company believes strongly in employees’ right to freedom of expression, online and elsewhere. At the same time, we expect our employees, when commenting on matters related to Cisco’s business, to exercise that freedom in a manner consistent with Cisco’s corporate values of transparency and integrity. Therefore, we have evolved our employee blogging policy to expressly address:

· blogging anonymously about issues employees have responsibilities for at Cisco; and
· passing on to third parties “anonymous” blog postings of any kind that employees know were written by someone at Cisco.

“If you comment on any aspect of the company’s business or any policy issue the company is involved in where you have responsibility for Cisco’s engagement, you must clearly identify yourself as a Cisco employee in your postings or blog site(s) and include a disclaimer that the views are your own and not those of Cisco. In addition, Cisco employees should not circulate postings that they know are written by other employees without informing the recipient that the source was within Cisco.”

Furthermore, the discussion continues as to whether corporations should allow bloggers to anonymously post about their work-related experiences and work/personal information. This lawsuit will lead to many companies either changing their policies or creating them, if they did not have one before.

Please be aware of your company’s blogging policy and use your best judgement when posting your views, whether you are outspoken, using your real name and affiliations with the company or companies involved, or posting anonymously, revealing critical information that shouldn’t be shared.

[via CNET]