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May 01, 2004
Microsoft's Blog March
Underscoring the growing importance of blogs to customer relationships, Microsoft's Chris Pratley (one of the MS Office bigwigs) estimates at least 400 Microsofties maintain blogs. That's a remarkable number for any business, especially for a company that defined the era of non-disclosure agreements.
The big question is, When will Bill Gates launch a blog? Within weeks, it would surely rank as one of the 100 most-linked blogs on Technorati. An unfiltered Bill Blog would be far more influential on the technology world than the company's incessant and ineffectual "Great Moments" ad campaign. Or any ad campaign, for that matter.
Love him or hate him, Gates is a rock star, and a Bill Blog would be the closest most people in the world will ever come to getting near him.
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Man, that would be the most interesting blog ever!
To quote a comment on John Battelle's analysis of Google's IPO (which you should also check out as an interesting take on not just customer relations, but investor relations):
"Think about how much Gates spends on philanthropy and Microsoft is still considered evil and is mistrusted. What if Microsoft could be ubiquitous AND loved and trusted by all? That is what Google is protecting. It is the strength of their brand."
(since you have HTML in comments turned off, the link is here: http://battellemedia.com/archives/000627.php )
Well, as far as I'm aware, Eric Rudder's the most senior Microsoft blogger (he's basically #3 in the company). He doesn't blog often, but we email every once in a while and I'm trying to convince him to ;)
To Josh's point, Google's manifesto prospectus is brilliant. Simply brilliant. They have more than earned my respect for setting out to do business in the name of long-term interests, not short-term greed defined by the Ponzi-scheme stock market.
An unfiltered blog written by the Google triumvirate (Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt) would be as influential as a Bill Blog.
But in this area, Google is bipolar. It advocates a highly transparent Internet business culture, but not about its own inner workings.
Given that Google is roped off by a culture of secrecy that once defined Microsoft, a Google blog is pretty unlikely. But it certainly would be widely read.
Subject: Online survey on business weblogs
Dear Sir or Madam,
My name is Matthew Lin, an MBA candidate at University of New Brunswick at Saint John, Canada. I am currently conducting a research on how weblogs are being used as business tools, and their particular implication for small and medium enterprises. I have designed a questionnaire in order to survey individuals who publish weblogs or can describe the reasoning behind their company’s weblog. The survey will be posted online for one month, started two weeks ago. I am seeking your assistance to promote this survey to your readers, in hope of gathering a good cross-section of business weblogs. Please spread the word!
The survey is available at:
http://business.unbsj.ca/bblog/
Additional information about this project (e.g., objectives, hypotheses) are available upon request.
Thank you for your consideration. If you are aware of others who might also be interested in posting this questionnaire URL, please feel free to forward this email to them.
Sincerely,
Matthew Lin
July 27, 04
UNBSJ Canada
just testing please dont mind!!! :)
http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/blog/2004/05/microsofts_blog.html
just testing please dont mind!!! :)
http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/blog/2004/05/microsofts_blog.html
just testing please dont mind!!! :)
http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/blog/2004/05/microsofts_blog.html
- Thanks for this great post. You've got some really good info in your blog. If you get a chance, you can check out my blog
on {mosquito magnet} at http://www.mosquitomagnetcenter.com
Mary Anne Martin
http://www.mosquitomagnetcenter.com
It'd be cool if Gates did blog, you don't really seem to hear much from him apart from conventions that he attends, it would be a great insight.
