This doodle couldn’t be any more true
By Stefan Constantinescu on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 11:44 PM PST In Blog Updates
I’m a huge Hugh MacLeod fan. He doodles on the back on business cards, scans them and shares them with the world. Topics range from his years living in NY, the blogosphere, various technology companies, sex and love.
This post made me seriously think about Nokia (NYSE: NOK):
Why were the S60 blogs started? Are there going to be any more Nokia blogs launched? The phones coming out today have been in the making for several years, how can Nokia be nimble enough to take feedback from the public and apply it to their products?
Out of a company with more than 50,000 employees, I can count the number of Nokians blogging on my fingers and toes. What about the others? They have a voice, but why aren’t they engaging in the conversation?
Blogging can be a full time job, you should know
I usually blog at night, after work etc; as I don’t have kids, a husband who cooks, and not doing research that I’m supposed to be doing…
Then again my blogs are more personal in nature and probably don’t count as a “Nokia blog”.
If an employee takes time to keep a blog, it might interfere with his “real work”. If you hire someone just to blog full time, he might not have the same kind of insights…
I think maybe Nokia should come up with multi-author blogs (or do these exist already?). So employees within a certain business group for example can all contribute to one blog. 100 sporadic bloggers can make one active and interesting blog.
> Why were the S60 blogs started?
I was writing a popular Nokia internal blog about S60 applications, and it’s purpose was to increase awareness inside Nokia about all the wonderful S60 stuff out there. One day, somebody asked me “why not make it public?”. I thought what the heck, and pitched the idea to S60.com people. They viewed this initiative initially as marketing or community activation kind of activity, but I viewed it also as a direct feedback channel from end-users to S60 developers. And I think it has really been worth it.
> If an employee takes time to keep a blog
…during his work hours, then I think he should be able to show that his/her blogging effort is somehow beneficial to the company or its customers. If they pay you for blogging, you shouldn’t blog just for the heck of it. For example I justify my blogging efforts during work hours with (1) spreading word about great S60 stuff, and (2) getting direct feedback from early adopters.
Feedback is important. Blogs are part of it, but how much effort should a company put to them? All the wisdom is not in the blogs. Take yours for example: we would have an N95 with a touchscreen and a jogdial. Not interested!..:)
I mean, blogs are written by people who usually are tech savvy and in the bleeding edge. The usual phone user is not like that. Nokia does a lot of research about user preferences that is not that visible.
At the same time blogs are important part of that conversation and and it’s wise to use blogsphere and the knowledge there to once advantage.
Re-inventing a company..hmm, that’s even more complex question..