Does your employer have an acceptable use policy for blogging?

It was an interesting question put to me by a reader a few weeks back and he wondered if there was a general policy out there. It's such a new phenomenon and people have different views on it. Sun loves blogging, at least by some people. O'Reilly has done it for years and Tim O'Reilly has written some great ones, well worth the time to read. It's an integral part of Joel Spolsky's FogBugz business and of course, the ones that we look through and cull for Database Daily are mostly from Microsoft and a few others mixed in.

However, there are some companies that have had issues. Google had a widely publicized issue was debated all across the 'Net. I ran across this look at some issues and if employers can intervene.

There's also an interesting perspective from Ben Silverman on blogging( apologies, the link is now dead). He has some good points about employers needing to protect their brand and image and blogs can damage those brands if things are posted by those inside the company.

It's an interesting conundrum. Is everyone that blogs a journalist? Is blogging about internal events at a company journalism or is it unfairly disclosing inside information? How long before corporations start hiring people to go work at a competitor and blog about poor quality control or some other topic that could hurt the competitor? Who's to say that's not already happening? 🙂

I write these editorials for a living, so it's likely that I could get away with being a journalist. But when I worked at a large company, I was careful about what I wrote in my blog. I didn't seek permission for blogging because I mostly did that for myself and my extended family. I did seek permission for writing articles about events and problems that had occurred and I always mention that in my interviews.

But I'm not sure that the everyday employee who starts his own website or blog can just write about anything and invoke freedom of speech. I'm curious if anyone has a policy at their company, but my advice would be to be aware that what you write reflects on the company and not write things that you wouldn't want your boss, or the CEO, or read.

Also, should we implement blogs at SQLServerCentral.com? We're torn and not sure anyone cares to read, or write, here, but I wonder if anyone would use them.

Steve Jones