Inside Intel (or Behind the Bunny Suit)
Understandably enough, IT companies are represented heavily in the short list of 40 Fortune 500 companies that blog. Joining them, Intel launched its own official blog last week, IT@Intel.
Like Dell and EDS, it has gone for a group blog with a number of authors. Other companies like Sun and Boeing have a senior executive in charge of the official blog, while the third approach, taken by companies like Microsoft and HP, is to have larger numbers of blogs from many product teams. My understanding is that Intel plans to introduce or make public other blogs over time.
As a reader, which is my only expertise in this matter, I tend to prefer single-author blogs. You get a sense of the personality behind the posts, their interests, enthusiasms and tics. There’s a sense in which you feel that you’ve got a relationship with the blogger. Team blogs can give the impression that you’re dealing with an institution rather than with people. From what I understand of blog writing, that’s true from the other side too. If it’s a solo affair, you start to develop a unique voice; you get to know your regulars; you start to work out what people are interested in that you can write about; and you start to really care about catering for your readership.
But Intel is doing a very good job so far, and know what they’re doing. Marty Menard, director for high performance computing, explains that their thinking was to create a convocation, “a group of people formally assembled for a special purpose”. If a single-author blog is analogous to going to dinner at their house, then the Intel blog is more like a seminar.