Blogging began as a few individuals keeping online journals and now has become an industry unto itself, replete with its own terminology (blogs, bloggers, blogosphere), data  formats, software applications and servers. Not unexpectedly, blogging has evolved from personal diaries to a method of corporate communication among management, employees and end-users.
Like many other computing terms that get shortened or changed into something that sounds more slick, the term blog is derived from its initial moniker of "Web log." It did not take long for that phrase to morph into its monosyllabic form.
At first, a blog was nothing more than a new direction for sharing personal diaries over the Internet. The concept, however, quickly caught on and became a way for pundits to offer regular commentaries online. Much like a guest-book feature on personal Web sites, servers catering to bloggers provide an interactive feature that lets readers enter their own comments on the main posts.
Blogging has become so popular that what began as a personal diary is now turning into a focused online publication outlet for political and business messages. In fact, the craze is now so hot that some corporate information departments are serving up the next chapter of company newsletters and stockholder reports through the medium.
Corporate blogging typically consists of two levels. Internal blogs are directed at employees and cannot be accessed beyond the corporate network . External blogs, however, take the company message beyond office workers, allowing customers and others to become readers.
Corporate Blog Pioneer
Sun Microsystems was one of the pioneers of corporate blogging. Sun president Jonathan Schwartz began a public blog in June 2004 and was the first Fortune 500 company president to do so. Now Schwartz's blog gets about 400,000 hits per month. His blogs have been joined by the blogs of over 2,000 other Sun employees.
To further the blogging efforts, the company provides open-source tools for all of its employees. And to foster a creative atmosphere that encourages corporate blogging, Sun's CIO, Bill Vass, has been very vocal about Sun's promotion of blogging and his own personal approval of the trend.
Vass believes that corporate blogging provides insight into the thinking of company leaders. "It allows them to communicate in an unfiltered way," he said. (continued...)
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