blackrimglasses

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: Seven rules for corporate blogging…

Time to take issue.

I don’t know whether or not to consider myself a corporate blogger. I blog and I work at a corporation. Most people I work with know I blog. Now, I don’t pretend to blog at all as a representative body of said corporation, but I do touch on issues that effect my work at the corporation in my blog.

Does that make sense?

“Corporate Blogging” is a polemic, not a trueism. It is like saying “partly sunny” when its really “partly cloudy.” All the term implies is that a corporate “gets” this crazy thing called blogging, when the unfortunate reality is, most don’t. Most “corporate bloggers” (Scoble included, even though I like his blog), are looked at as representative bodies rather than individuals, and their blogs are falsely elevated by virtue of signifiers that are not tied to their intrinsic identity. They elevate themselves further by ascribing themselves “A-list” status, whilst the oroboros of the blogosphere feeds this tendency with its omnipresent hall-of-mirrors discourse.

Lets just get to the truth: corporate bloggers are avatars of the corporation. Nothing more, and thus the term “blogger” as ascribed to them is disingenuous.

I think I can call myself a corporate blogger. Why? Because I blog. I don’t pretend to be the “CTE” of Warner Music Group/Warner Bros. Records. I don’t pretend to be an A-lister. I don’t pretend to speak to my industry, nor represent my industry in any way. I blog. I am supported in my blogging by a corporation, but I like to think what I say is more unfiltered, less didactic and less self-important by virtue of the fact that I am not identifying myself as an avatar of corporation. And for fucks sake, the picture on my site isn’t me looking important. It’s me with my 14 week old pug.

Why does that make me a corporate blogger? Simply because my blog is part of my job, but not confined by the job I perform. I’m just as likely to post about loving my wife and pug and cat as I am about DRM, or cool new shit on the web, or meetings, or my e-mail habits.

So what am I saying? I haven’t a fucking clue. It’s 12:30AM and I just ran three miles. But I think what I’m saying is that “Corporate Blogging” should be termed “Feeding the Oroboros.”

And us C-listers, who work at large companies and blog because we like to talk about shit…. Well, I like to think we’re the true corporate bloggers. Remove the corporate and we’re still relevant.