By Davis Freeberg
Chris Anderson and Ross Mayfield have embarked on a project to create a definitive list of all Fortune 500 companies that maintain an active blog. Interestingly enough it appears that despite the popularity of blogging, only 4% of Fortune 500 companies maintain a blog. Corporate blogging can have it’s advantages as well as disadvantages, but as the internet changes the way that information is processed, keeping open communication with the public will take on an increasingly important role. At some point they are hoping to incorporate stock quotes with their list of corporate bloggers in order to track the performance of these companies. It will be interesting to see if these companies end up outperforming their peers.
In addition to tracking Fortune 500 bloggers, they have also opened a Wiki that lists all Corporate blogs on the internet. This is a work in progress, but is a good place to find out what insiders are saying about their products and services. While it’s not much of a surprise, Microsoft has the most bloggers on this list. I’m glad that Microsoft has done such a great job of fostering an open and honest dialogue with their customers and hope that as blogging continues to catch on, more companies will encourage their employees to participate in the conversation.