Let me tell you a brief story…Once upon a time (Before my military "stint&quot I was scared of flying. It started when I watched on the Discovery Channel their episode of "When planes crash", this being the night before I was to fly from PA, to AZ. I was so scared that I would be on a plane that would crash. At that time I looked at everything as "Well the percentages SAY it can only happen so many times, it’ll be me that one time". However I couldn’t avoid getting on that plane. The minute that plane took off all I said was "Here we go, I’m gonna die", I actually made a joke with someone that it would be better if a bomb was on the plane because then we wouldn’t really have to worry about crashing. A nice Flight Attendant (Realizing I was 15 and from back woods PA) reminded me that you never say "bomb" on a plane (later I seen on the news why). Anyhow…after my flight I had about 3 more connections, each one got better. After that when I was in the Army flying actually became something fun to do (even jumping out of the plane) because it often meant I got to do something new. Well why should any of this matter?

I’ve been trying to talk to my management about starting an official department blog/journal. In the spirit of appeasing people I even said I would let management read whatever it was before it got posted. I thought it would be a good idea to show our members what WE were doing. I live in a secluded department and we’re very "secrative" however we are probably one of the most dynamic departments within AOL, we impact TONS of things…we just never get
the credit for it ;). That being said I have met large ammounts of opposition about this. When providing examples such as aimInfo, Tales of a Running Man, Gus Verdun, and Justinsblog I was told that they are "all AIM, different side of the business, find us some AOL bloggers". So I did…I found Corey Lucier and Sree Kotay. So I went back to my management and said "look here is an architect and a SVP and they’re both blogging" (and with all due respect Sree post like there is no privacy policy at all). So can we now? The argument was posted that no one knows why Sree can blog what he blogs and gets away with it, and why Corey can blog as well. It was also stated that "We have nothing to blog about" and when mentioning the steadfastness of the companies response to certain incidents the answer was given "That’s why we have PR people". I hate to say it this way…but our PR people aren’t cutting it anymore. It’s not that they are no good at their jobs…it’s that people know they are PR people and so discount their statements. Real people want REAL people answering them, not something that has been sliced, diced, and ran through legal. But I digress…

Greg had introduced me to Ted’s blog and Gus’s blog. Like I said in a previous post my blogroll is 95% AOL people. Corey had emailed me and asked to be added to my blogroll as well. My belief is that to let people know that we believe in our own products and our company as a whole we need to let people see "US", not a PR person. People read press releases because they "have to", people read blogs because they "want to". However I can respect the decision of my management, they said that if I had a blog to keep it to myself because if they knew about it then they would be obligated to read it and take business action on it, that’s fine. I would rather have my blog and be able to say what is needed, praise who I want/deserves it, or critcize who I want on it because that is the only way to really "hear" your people (Internal/External). But sometimes like flying you just have to do it, you can’t escape it, I’m sorry. Google is another company that I see falling into this. Recently I had read Matt Cutts blog, in his blog he states that he works for Google (This is new) and also states what he does at Google, talks about something business related, but reminds people of his disclaimer that he voices his opinion. This isn’t anything that I like and I can’t see him benefiting from. If your going to say it say it, but don’t say it, and then recant saying "Well it’s my Opinion", I had this discussion once with Asa Dotzler…you can’t talk about work on your personal blog and expect people not to respect it as the statement of someone in the company. Say it, stick with it and live with it. If you get Docce’d you get it but just stick with your word, after all how else can we belive you?

Matt talks about penaltizing TrafficPower and goes onto talk about their clients also being hurt because of the SEO "tricks" that they use. However this is his personal opinion. As Newsome.org explains SEO and the game that you play can be a little tricky. Jim Boykin also comments on the fact that Matt ran things past lawyers and that this is probably the first time that Google (or someone from there) has ever confirmed saying anything. Imagine now had this been AOL? Google is going to get all kinds of press over this one item, Matt is definately going to get press over this…however he disabled comments. At first I was insulted, after all he doesn’t want to hear from people? Maybe he’s scared of flying also? Sometimes you just have to get out there and do it. I did, Ted did, Greg did, Justin(s) did it, Sree, Dossy, etc, etc, etc have gotten out and said what they have to say…who’s next? Robert said in Naked Conversations that the next generation of businesses will have to blog, people wont trust them otherwise, how long untill a company goes extinct? What will you do to help it from suffering that fate? Sometimes you don’t have a choice…but don’t worry every other connection makes it easier and the inflight movie gets better everytime you see it.

technorati tags: AOL, SEO, Google, Blogging