Blogging in Microsoft

Issac mentioned Bill’s presentation on blogging (one of the topics). He also comments on the blogging in Microsoft (and kindly mentioned my blog). In one sentence, blogging in Microsoft is hot and becoming hotter.

Let’s see what Bill said in the Microsoft CEO Summit 2004:

Another new phenomenon that connects into this is one that started outside of the business space, more in the corporate or technical enthusiast space, a thing called blogging. And a standard around that that notifies you that something has changed called RSS.

This is a very interesting thing, because whenever you want to send e-mail you always have to sit there and think who do I copy on this. There might be people who might be interested in it or might feel like if it gets forwarded to them they’ll wonder why I didn’t put their name on it. But, then again, I don’t want to interrupt them or make them think this is some deeply profound thing that I’m saying, but they might want to know. And so, you have a tough time deciding how broadly to send it out.

Then again, if you just put information on a Web site, then people doesn’t know to come visit that Web site, and it’s very painful to keep visiting somebody’s Web site and it never changes. It’s very typical that a lot of the Web sites you go to that are personal in nature just eventually go completely stale and you waste time looking at it.

And so, what blogging and these notifications are about is that you make it very easy to write something that you can think of, like an e-mail, but it goes up onto a Web site. And then people who care about that get a little notification. And so, for example, if you care about dozens of people whenever they write about a certain topic, you can have that notification come into your Inbox and it will be in a different folder and so only when you’re interested in browsing about that topic do you go in and follow those, and it doesn’t interfere with your normal Inbox.

And so if I do a trip report, say, and put that in a blog format, then all the employees at Microsoft who really want to look at that and who have keywords that connect to it or even people outside, they can find the information.

And so, getting away from the drawbacks of e-mail — that it’s too imposing — and yet the drawbacks of the Web site — that you don’t know if there’s something new and interesting there — this is about solving that.

The ultimate idea is that you should get the information you want when you want it, and we’re progressively getting better and better at that by watching your behavior, ranking things in different ways.

Bill’s view of blogging is, not surprisingly, from the technical trends perspective. But the perspective from employees are completely different. I observed many creative usage of blogging that is related to business. Here are some typical Microsoft Bloggers in China.

Using Blogging as MVP Communication Tools

The most successful and innovative application of blogging, according to Wendy, is Grace’s MVP Lead blogging site (Chinese site). She hosted her blog at blog.joycode.com, where almost 50+ China MVPs gather. Blogging is perfect way for announcements and event organzation. As the China MVP lead, she droved the MVP satisfaction to the third highest in the world and the highest in Asia. That is fantastic. I believe a smooth communication like blogger is a very important factor for the MVP satisfaction.

Using Blogging as Technical Evangelism Tools

Eric’s blog (Chinese site) and Dotnettools are successful technical blogging on Microsoft technology. There are many other technical blogs in China run by Microsoft employees.

Using Blogging as Personal Presence

There are also many blogging site are for personal use, like mine, Liuzhijian and Run2me… The owner happen to be working in Microsoft. Blogging has been a very hot topic.

Blogging in Microsoft Worldwide

It is very clear now that the company is encouraging its employee to start blogging. Internal blogging hosting service has been running for several months and the blogs.MSDN.com is the centralized external blogging service provider by Microsoft. Among them, Gretchen Ledgard is using jobsblog to deliver recruiting information and introduces the processes and standards in Microsoft recruiting actives. Very cool! I believe many people are interested in.

More and More MSFT bloggers

I am seeing more and more people inside Microsoft joining the blogging movement. Some quitted after two or three post, but many has stick to it for more than half years. I didn’t expected when I started my blog in 2002.

BTW, two hours ago, three more Microsoft senior employees gathered at my cubicle and I showed them blogger.com, RSS and reader. They are very excited and planned to start their own.

DISCLAIMER: This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights. 本贴子以”现状”提供且没有任何担保,同时也没有授予任何权利

6 thoughts on “Blogging in Microsoft

  1. Hi Jianshuo,

    Do you mind showing us how to do blogging? Or in another word, if i want to set up a site like yours, what is the step 1,2,3. I assume you need your hosting service, but where did you get this application? Are you using a database of some kind? Is this application portable for both microsoft and linux/unix environment?

    – Shen

  2. Blogspot.com is blocked by the Great Firewall, while Blogger.com not.

    I can write but not read what I have wrote and comments from others.

  3. heya jian shuo, I am from Malaysia and am looking for a job in Shanghai soon. I currently maintain a blog at blogspot, but heard from my girlfriend in China that it can’t be accessed in China. Are there any workarounds? (Apart from getting content via rss feeds) Do you think I should change to another blog service provider? If yes, are other services banned in China? (typepad, livejournal, etc) Thanks!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *