The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil (Penguin Portfolio); available on Amazon

The Fortune 500 Business Blog Index, a much needed resource,  has launched — just in time to add to the book! (Note: it’s a wiki, so anyone can add updates to it.) The index is the result of a joint effort between Chris Anderson and Wired and Ross Mayfield of Socialtext. Learn more from Chris, writing here on his Longtail blog. According to the calculations of Wired’s interns, only 16 members or 3% of the Fortune 500 have blogs. You can download the Fortune 500 blogging spreadsheet they created.

Chris’s theory, which hatched during a dinner with Doc Searls, is as follows:

"Perhaps, Doc wondered, the risks and uncertainties of public business
blogging are so great that big companies only do it under duress, when
their other corporate messaging has lost traction. So companies on the
way up don’t want to mess with their success by introducing a new lens
on the enterprise that isn’t controlled by the PR department. But
companies on the way down are willing to try anything to regain the
confidence of their customers."

And the evidence thus far, after an initial look at the Fortune 500 blogging index:

"(We) found only 16 members (3%) of the Fortune 500 with business blogs.
And, for what it’s worth with such a small sample size, the average
trailing 12-month share performance of the blogging members was +5.7%,
while the non-blogging members was +19%. So although the statistics
aren’t good enough to confirm Doc’s theory, they do point in the right
direction."

And the 16 Fortune 500 bloggers are:

Amazon, Avaya, Avon, Cisco, Dell, EDS, Ford, GM, HP, Microsoft, Motorala, Oracle, Sprint, Sun, Texas Instruments and Boeing.

[via Jim Turner]

Here’s the list from The New York Times. Includes Freakonomics, Harry Potter, Blink, The World Is Flat, etc. Would be fun to make next year’s list. I’m hoping the timing won’t be off. Will “corporate blogging” have peaked by mid-2006?

Umm, no, I don’t think so. Actually that’s part of my thesis. Most people are just getting into what blogs and blogging and the blogosphere will mean for business. Yeah, I know for those of us inside the blogosphere this topic is old news. It’s loud and echo-y inside here. Everyone knows about it. It’s all been said. Blaa, blaa, etc. etc.

But most business folk, certainly corporate types, aren’t hanging around the blogosphere. They’re surely not reading the drivel I’m posting here. But I hope they’ll read The Corporate Blogging Book!

Also, worth a read - Pamela Paul’s NYTimes essay on book blogs. She starts out:

ALMOST every author I know with a new book does it - the embarrassing, nearly irresistible, ritualistic dip into Internet-assisted narcissism. I know I do. Prodded by a combination of curiosity and dread, I’ll scour the Web not just to ascertain sales (impossible) or check out the press coverage, but to get a sense of what ordinary readers are saying about my book when they think I’m not listening.

I’m writing the chapter on ROI of blogging. Gotta have that one in a corporate blogging book, of course. And saw today’s cartoon by the ever naughty Hugh Macleod of GapingVoid fame. Wish I could put this in the book.

Although it’s not entirely fair to Mr. Sock Puppet on the left. I mean, it is a legitimate question.

Here’s an interesting comment from Hill & Knowlton’s Niall Cook on "value" (relative and subjective) vs. ROI (measurable and objective) - as it relates to blogging.

SyndicateQNA

In the home stretch. Phew. Very intense.