Book Review: The Weblog Handbook by Rebecca Blood
I recently read Rebecca Blood's canonical The Weblog Handbook. This book provides prescriptive instructions on how to author your weblog, find your audience, maintain a sense of balance, and respect the culture and etiquette that have developed over time.
I enjoyed the chapters on finding your voice, developing your audience, and especially the community etiquette. I've been involved with so many different online communities over the years, and one common thread is a strong sense of shared community etiquette as a success factor in the good functioning of those communities. (Sorry for asking for that link Rebecca!) As written, the book has a tremendous amount of culture and history in it. It is as much a book about the emergence of the weblog culture as it is about creating and maintainging a blog.
I think that weblogs used inside businesses could have an important role to play in creating a culture of transparency and authenticity inside corporations. I think creating transparency and authenticity inside corporations is a much needed component to restore humanity and sustainability to corporations. If people act in an open way that incorporates feedback (as maintaining a blog does, for example), then I think that creates a subtle but ongoing pressure to consider the social impact of what's being discussed.
I'd love to see a second edition of The Weblog Handbook that spends a chapter or two on the effective use of weblogs inside bigger businesses. As well as exerting subtle pressure towards more socially beneficial behavior, I believe that weblogs can play a very useful role for businesses as a more engaging and effective way for employees and managers to communicate and inform each other. The methods that exist today (multiple choice employee surveys), powerpoint presentations that lack any intelligible content, and impersonal emails) aren't engaging or effective, and are mostly ignored. Of course, the most difficult part of the challenge would be to convince business people to really be authentic and transparent, and to value the feedback and comments they get on their blog.