GM Blogging a far cry from Roger

I was reading about Bob lutz’s blog for GM and how candid he is with the people he engages with in the blog. It was only later I remembered seeing Roger and Me, the film by Michael Moore, about his quest to interview GM’s then boss Roger Smith about the job cuts that were happening in Flint Michigan. It stands to the power of blogging that I had all but forgotten about the negative image this film painted of GM due to the more recent good publicity being generated by Bob.

Galway Races

Making my 8th trip to Ballybrit this year. Bertie Ahern is generally visible so I always have a question ready for him. This year if I get the chance I’ll ask him if he’s betting in Sterling or Euro, I like to think he’d laugh at it, after all he has no shame about these things.

Damn

Via Damien Mulley

Google Dublin Visit

Walt and Kara visited Google Dublin yesterday, I was glad too see that Karrie shares my view on the overly patronising “cool” working enviroment or “googly-ness” as she put it. The video’s not a great ad for working there or a great video for that matter.

Closed shop blogging?

Whenever an interesting story is talked about on one bloggers site, whether it be Irish or internationally, it seems to feature on a lot of other blogs too, each linking to the next. On the flipside of this when bloggers miss an interesting story do they all miss it too?

Today silicon republic, a non blogging tech news site reported that the D series of conferences might be coming to Dublin. This is definately of interest to the Irish blogging community yet I havent seen it reported anywhere. More surprising is that the Irish times have reported that Facebook is being suied for copyright infringement. I have’nt seen this reported either yet would certainly expect to see Techcrunch, techmeme or any of the Irish bloggers link to this story.

Is this a side effect of the walled garden that the blogosphere can represent?

Facebook Monster

I have been getting some unexpected invites for Facebook lately and am curious as to the universal appeal of this particular site. I has definately finished off Linked-in as far as I’m concerned with the few contacts I had there now on facebook. It has not however caused any migration from my Myspace people.

Damien Mulley gives a good synopsis of the evoloution of social media sites as they all take there turn being flavour of the month. What Facebook has done that is different for me is to root out a huge number of old and unexpected acquaintances. This must be due to what Damien calls the Honeytrap, facebooks automatic scan of your address book was the first thing that struck me when I signed up, it found people on facebook that I forgot were in my email address book.

As far as the other social media sites go they have there place too but some of them can be reminiscent of schoolyard politics with some kids having the cool trainers and a swearword shaved into their head while Facebook’s single skin does away with all this and discards that Juvenal element that can be off-putting to some.

Managerial motivation for blogs?

One of the first arguments being put forward in the cluetrain manifesto is that comapnies need to tear down barriers between different functions within a company and also between a comapny and it’s customers. One synical thing to note is that companies that encourage blogging either behind firewalls or in public may only be placating both employees and customers by making them feel involved.

Change managment initiatives are always heavily steeped in the need for management to communicate with lower level employees within a company, however this is as frequently a token gesture so that employees cannot claim they were not consulted over a new IT system for example as it is a genuine efforyt to elicit usful input from the employees that will be affected by change in a company.

Basically, it cannot be presumed as it seems to be in the cluetrain manifesto/Naked conversations that all companies that are encouraging blogging are doing it for the reasons being put forward in these books.

Free Stuff!

Well I am still a student so I want a T-shirt! and all my gear usually gets pilfered on the first night of a festival so it would be welcome.

Internet TV

I find it funny after trying Joost and Bablegum that neither are a patch on TV Links , although granted Tv Links are hardly playing by the rules

The Range of the Blogosphere

It has been mentioned already in Naked Conversations that although certain programs like Firefox have spread very quickly and had millions of downloads in a short space of time that they still only make a dent in the mainstream market. Even though firefox has huge penetration in blogging circles IE still has over 85% of the market share for browsers. This leads to the question, are blogging trends eventually leaking out into the mainstream or are they staying as niche fancies of the early adopters that occupy the blogosphere?