There is much excitement today in the blogging community over a software engineer at Friendster who was fired for blogging. Many bloggers are up in arms about it.
The posts would indicate that the firing was done in an abrupt and fairly heavy handed manner that is probably not in accord with California's employee-friendly laws which require warnings and retraining for non-felonious behaviour.
It seems like the blogging employee issue is a fairly tricky one. First there is the the fact that companies should have policies about employee behaviour so associates know where they stand. Then there is the issue of talking (not to mention publishing) about work outside of work. This is complicated with companies like friendster which trade on networking and information sharing, of which blogging is a major tool. Most companies treat information as property, witness the entire issue of intellectual property. (The CEO of Friendster came out of network entertainment television, which is very "hush-hush" secretive about business, projects and processes in development.)
Then there is an issue which I haven't seen discussed yet relative to employee blogging which is branding and negative associations. If an employee is blogging publicly and repeatedly referencing their company and their job they become associated with the "brand" of their company. Certainly many associations are positive and many people may think better of the company because of what they read in an employee's blog but the blogging may not be a public association the company wishes to have. Blogging is not a private activity and a blog which references a company can reflect upon the company.
It's a complex topic.
Posted by apopheniac at August 31, 2004 10:32 AM