Bloggers Fired For Online Comments
Fri, Feb 11 2005

By Jonathan Oxer, IVT Technical Director

Blogs are one of the fastest growing online phenomena at the moment. They're been bubbling along as a low-key part of the Internet culture for years, but like many things they've gone through a long gestation period before suddenly bursting onto the scene as the latest "new" thing.

A blog is basically just a personal journal that's published online. It typically consists of a series of journal entries of a paragraph or two each, displayed on a page with the latest items at the top. Bloggers post entries about their field of interest, or current affairs, or what they ate for breakfast, as well as commenting on what they read in other blogs. It's all pretty informal and personal and loads of fun, with blogs often breaking insider news before it reaches the mainstream press.

Many companies allow or even encourage their staff to publish blogs discussing the company or their profession. It's a great way to build up credibility and personalise the business, providing an endearing human face to companies that are otherwise just anonymous corporate monoliths.

However, it's important to make sure that bloggers within your company don't overstep the mark. Debate has flared up recently about how candid bloggers should be, with some arguing that the right to blog is automatic given the importance our society places on free speech. They say they should be able to write anything they like in their blogs without fear of their blog entries being used against them.

Businesses obviously don't like that idea: what if an employee works all day, then goes home and posts about how much it sucks to work there? Or posts confidential information about company strategy or finances? Or even just says rude things about the CEO?

There have been some high profile cases recently of employees losing their jobs due to comments posted in their blogs. For example, Mark Jen was fired from Google earlier this week after posting a running commentary about his first month with the company, in which he disclosed information that his employer would have preferred to keep secret. A Delta Airlines employee lost her job recently when she took provocative photographs of herself in her Delta uniform inside a plane, and then published them on her personal blog. And last year a Microsoft contractor lost his job when he published photos he took of Apple G5 computers being delivered to Microsoft headquarters.

Obviously there has to be some middle ground, an agreement on how candid your staff can be when they publish a public blog. Like most things there needs to be a balanced approach: it's not a good idea to just let anyone publish whatever they like, but on the other hand it's wasting a potentially very powerful tool if you ban personal blogs altogether.

Many companies now have a written policy on just how much their employees are allowed to say in public. For example, Sun Microsystems has a policy which is published online.

Policies like this obviously apply to far more than the Internet, but it's really only in recent years that public comment policies have become an issue. After all, it would have been very hard for a random employee to gain an audience a few years ago with comments about their work environment. Now, with the reach and immediacy of the Internet, it's relatively easy for an individual to gain a significant audience and have a major impact on the way your company is perceived by a large number of people.

Don't let this scare you: rather than worry that the portrait they paint might be unflattering, you should instead help them paint one that brings in new business and shows your company to be progressive and an expert in your field.

There are a large number of blogging tools available online. If you are interested in learning about what options are available or in establishing a blog policy please feel free to contact IVT.