May 15th, 2005 at 11:21 pm
Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That’s Changing Your World, written by Hugh Hewitt, is 155 pages and a couple of appendices that detail the importance of the instant publishing of popular opinion. This fast read came in at 1 hour, 10 minutes.
The author targets leaders of corporations and organizations to advise that there is more to sharing knowledge than what is done in traditional news and media outlets and that there are ways to use the “blogosphere” as a means of defending one’s company and extolling one’s products.
Hewitt starts out with a history of text, hitting hardest on the Gutenberg Press’s effect of spreading the Bible in the early 1500’s, taking the authority of the Catholic Church bureaucracy down a notch. In a similar way, the blogosphere disseminates information quickly when Dan Rather breaks a story using forged documents or when John Kerry tries to run on a Vietnam record that is considerably more questionable than the mainstream media would indicate.
The latter half of the book advocates the use of quick public opinion in decision making. Would Coca-Cola have pushed out New Coke if it had quick feedback from drinkers? Bloggers can offer special experience and accreditation to opinions; a typesetting historian can give his opinion on the possibility of a forgery.
The author closes with an idea I find intriguing: that leaders of any sort should start a blog, even if the scope is just internal. Instead of the one-way communication involved in a press release or email to employees, a CEO can put forth ideas and solicit input from the front lines before something is implemented.
Such a blog would be beneficial at my company and is partly implemented in some areas. Halliburton has “communities” set up by IT where engineers and service supervisors ideally can discuss issues with products or suggest services in unknown condition. I have heard of one instance, though, where Legal removed a post because it disclosed confidential information. I found this strange because I thought the community was internal, but apparently it wasn’t. I can think of two lurkers whose comments here could be beneficial. 
Blog is short and well-written. The first two-thirds is old hat to those who scour the Internet for their news and analysis. It is a nice introduction to the evolution of the written word and gives good reasons for the uninformed to pay attention to the online world. I would recommend this book to any manager (I don’t know many CEOs) who might be interested in using the Internet to improve their products and services.
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