More Curious Than Worried

Business Communication (pt 1): How Many Companies Use Blogs?

This is part 1 of 3 in a series of blog posts talking about corporate use of blogs. It’s a way for me to get extra credit for my Business Communication course and add what is hopefully valuable content to the internet.

The first section of my assignment asks me to locate and report statistical data about how many companies have blogs and use blogs. You would think with all the social media gurus out there, this information would be everywhere! Not so. Finding out how many companies use blogs has turned out to be more challenging than I thought.

According to the Fortune 500 Blogging Wiki on Socialtext.net, only 78 companies that make up the Fortune 500 have used blogs to communicate with their customers.  That’s only 15.6%! With the rising popularity of companies using other forms of social media such as Twitter and Facebook, I’m surprised that the number of Fortune 500 companies with blogs is so low.

Technocrati’s (http://www.technocrati.com) State of the Blogosphere 2009 does a great job of analyzing the different reasons people and business use blogs, but trying to figure out out the number of blogs is, well, impossible. Their data comes from a survey of 2,828 bloggers as well as data from Lijit’s (http://www.lijit.com) 11,000 active bloggers and those bloggers’ 2.5 million connections. From what Technocrati found, only 13% of blogs are for the purpose of benefiting a business. Out of that 13%, only 4% of those blogs are for businesses other than the self-employed.

Blogging is still primarily done by people, such as myself, who blog only for the purpose of getting our thoughts and ideas into the public realm.

How to Waste Time on the Interwebs

I haven’t posted much to my blogs lately. I’d like to say it’s been because I’ve been really busy and productive and such, but that would be a lie. Truth is, I spend most of my time in front of my computer wasting it. Here’s some of my all time best ways I’ve found to waste time on the interwebs:

Credit: www.searchenginepeople.com

1. StumbleUpon, http://www.stumbleupon.com – Have you ever tried something only to have it steal an entire day from you because you keep saying “Just one more time”? This genius of a toolbar/website lets you set up your interests, then you click one simple “Stumble” button that leads you to new and different sites that you’ll probably find entertaining until you realize you’re thirsty because you’ve just spent 5 straight hours saying “Just one more time”.

Credit: dbs.homeport.org

2. Yahoo! Games, http://games.yahoo.com/free-games - Do you like simple games that require no installation and no commitments of any kind? Did you like Bejeweled? Do you want to play 50 variations of it? Since this is the only site with games that’s not blocked at work, this site has stolen tons of hours from me in the past couple of months.

Credit: userlogos.org

3. Google Reader, http://www.google.com/reader - “But wait! Google Reader is a useful tool of internet news-gathering!”, you’re tempted to say. I agree with you, but like with any social internet tool it has the ability to suck you dry of useful time. I currently subscribe to 90 blogs. Most of them update at least once a day. I need to weed it down some because it’s not nearly as useful as it should be.

Credit: www.bobkrist.com

4. The Comments Section of a News Site (ie. http://www.denverpost.com) – Imagine being in a room with a rabid Neo-Conservative, an anarchist, a bible-thumper, a tree-hugger, an Obama worshipper, a Greenpeace activist, a racist, and a Glenn Beck wannabe. Now imagine someone is asking for all their opinions on a new story at once and you can hear everyone’s opinion. Generalities are made. Rude nicknames are thrown around. Arguing ensues. Sometimes, though rarely, something intelligent is said. Good fun! (If you want to find me on there, my screen name is ScottP.)

Credit: icanhascheezburger.com

5. LOLcats http://icanhascheezburger.com – Some things are tailor made to waste your time, like the slinky. These cute, funny pictures are the furry slinkies of the interwebs. If you don’t know what a LOLcat is, I’ll explain:

LOL = Laugh Out Loud.
Cat = cat.

So the whole point of the site and the pictures is to laugh at cats. Pointless? Yep. Entertaining? Oh yeah!

An attempt to use Google Wave to post a blog