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Editor's Note
Blog Wild
Blogging has become the hot new thing in corporate communications these days. Once the province of grassroots Web participants looking for a way to communicate widely without actually leaving their bedrooms, blogging is now a tool in the corporate utility belt. Executive bloggers range from Bob Lutz, the CEO at GM, to Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, and if you believe the breathless reports on blogging in the big news magazines, more are joining the charge every day. 'Those idiots in marketing are co-opting a new paradigm in communication—and giving it a black eye in the process,' say the purists. But read any blog on any corporate Web site and you'll hear a tone and style that is enormously different from what you would have read even six months ago. Blogging has made it OK for corporate executives to sound like human beings, instead of elder statesmen. No one thinks that senior executives are sitting in their office late at night, typing away, and then clicking post (although I may be wrong about Mark Cuban—it doesn't sound like there's any filter there). But even if executive blog content is being reviewed by legal, PR, et al. before publication, the usual stultification of language isn't taking place—it's obvious to everyone involved that there's a voice associated with the act of blogging that can't be tidied up or clouded over, without losing credibility as a blog entry.
Oracle has never been the most buttoned-up company in the industry, but the advent of executive blogs on our site (take a look at oracle.com/blog/executive) has opened the window to a form of communication that I think has made the Oracle Web site a better place to visit. The blog entries are interesting and easier to read than traditional Web content.
You'll also find another form of blogs—audio blogs, known as podcasts—on the Oracle Web site. Podcasts are mini audio programs with technical information and commentary from Oracle executives and engineers, and can be downloaded to MP3 players or played directly from Oracle's Web site. You can find them at oracle.com/technology/community/opinion.
Margaret Terry Lindquist
margaret.lindquist@oracle.com
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