One of the outcomes at the recent BlogOn 2005 Social Media Summit was the release of a survey conducted by Guidewire Group and iUpload, a content management vendor that also offers corporate blogging software. The survey has some potential and initial statistics are interesting but the survey unfortunately does not have enough data points to warrant serious attention. A copy of the survey can be downloaded from the iUpload site (filling out a contact form is required). My first concern is the sample size. 140 respondents is small. The respondent group was also self-selecting which can skew results (even though the survey was publicized, it is not the most balanced way of gathering statistically relevant data). Only 19% of the people who responded were from companies with greater than 1000 employees (that's about 26 people). Around 32 people responded from companies with revenue of over $100 million. It's unfortunate since the media has picked these statistics up as trends across "corporate america" and clearly that inference is a leap of faith unless you want to extrapolate that based on 26-32 people. You can of course. I would prefer to still classify corporate blogging as embryonic and in an exploratory/pilot phase within the vast majority of companies.
That said, I'm still a strong proponent of blogging behind the firewall for a variety of reasons (e.g., collaboration, capturing conversational insight, sharing know-how, building community, KM, etc.). But I don't think we're anywhere near the percentages that this survey represents as a trend. Concerning iUpload, I still hear more about Traction Software than other vendors in terms of blogging products clients either mention or recognize when I offer a short-list. The McDonald's win however should provide iUpload with a good case study. All boats rise (re: blogging best-of-breed tools) when vendors in an emerging space begin to carve out their niche versus established collaboration and content vendors.
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