Blogs are dead, long live clogs!

For blogs to work effectively recipients need to be notified of the latest posting using what's known as an RSS feed but only 18% of bloggers use RSS. And few potential recipients are able to subscribe and read this type of content.

As the Swedish Hiveminds online magazine puts it, RSS is still a niche activity and the leading blogs, based on traffic and RSS stats are still, by far, being mostly visited on site.

In a corporate context, I have often wondered why CEOs should want to publish directly to their audiences using blogs anyway. Excepting the naturally gifted communicators, professional communicators have largely been trying to discourage them from doing this unedited for years!

Amateurish user-generated web pages have no place on the core pages of an intranet.

Blogs often look drab

What's more, blogging software delivers drab looking web pages that scroll ad nauseam. The postings are not styled for good screen reading, and most bloggers don't cheer up their postings with pictures.

Amateurish user-generated web pages have no place on the core pages of an intranet - especially from a CEO. Surely it would be better to let the web or comms team create conventional but good-looking web pages for their bosses instead?

As for the concept of people using the blog reply feature, there have been numerous legal issues following libellous blog postings. And verbal abuse beneath a CEOs missive is just not acceptable!

Replies need to be moderated, otherwise you are living with a ticking time bomb. But any delay in a reply's appearance only lowers credibility.

Happily all the hype about blogs is giving way to some realism. So what is happening instead? Well podcasting, and use of video have really taken off and inhouse email newsletters are gathering pace too.

As for the thoughts of the CEO - let's tightly edit these and display them on thoughtfully designed web pages. While we are at it, let's rename them clogs, short for 'corporate blogs'.