People Are Starting To Grasp The Obvious!

Jakob Nielsen’s a smart guy, and has been one of the leading advocates for usability on the web for more than 10 years. But even smart guys can be slow to pick up on obvious ideas, so it was good to see an idea pop up in his (generally excellent) article on the best intranets of 2007:

Intranets tend to avoid the over-hyped fads that wash across the Web. Several winners have weblogs this year, but the blogs are restrained, emphasizing useful information instead of “what I did on my last date.” Microsoft even has a blog for its intranet’s managing editor to discuss features and news coverage.

It’s great to note the increasing adoption of intranet blogs — that’s one of the main scenarios that people use Movable Type Enterprise for, which might explain why Movable Type Enterprise has seen such rapid adoption. But it’s a little odd to see people still dragging out the old “people like to blog about their lunch!” bit.

So, we’ll repeat it one more time: Blogs are a communications tool, just like email instant messaging, and SMS. That means they can be used to talk about, yes, what I did on my last date. (You might wanna use Vox for that, so you can restrict your post and your boss can’t see it.) But when I’m at work? I blog about our customers, partners, and internal projects, the same stuff I talk about on email and IM when I’m at work. That’s what you’ll be using your business blogs for as well. Call it “emphasizing useful information.”