Whither corporate blogs?

Neil McIntosh makes some good points about why blogs could be bad for business for Guardian Unlimited.

He disputes a recent New York Times story's assertion that the corporate blog is catching on, pointing out "that the paper's evidence for such optimism was thin on the ground." Broader concerns such as legal liability and regulations governing how and when public companies disclose information will probably keep businesses from using Weblogs to communicate with the outside world, McIntosh notes.

"The notion that more than a few companies might relax their external relations strategies enough to allow weblog communication, willy-nilly, between staff members and the outside world, is absurd, no matter how many consultants insist such communication might actually have a beneficial effect on a company's image.

Even the notion that blogs are mostly useful for internal communications, runs into the harsh realities of workplace life, he says:

While blogging's earliest advocates operate on the "information wants to be free" principle, many businesses would shudder at the very thought.

"Information is power" is a more likely mantra in many organisations. Whenever you hear those three words, you're hearing the signal of the kind of closed information culture where there's also a heads-down, bunker mentality utterly unsuited to the openness required for a convincing weblog, be it an external PR effort, or knowledge-sharing internal one.

There are plenty of areas of business where people are judged on their knowledge, and the competitive edge - and thus the safety of everyone's jobs - is the thickness of a single good idea. Share it all on a weblog, with competitors or (worse) an office rival? You must be kidding.