CEOs Blog While Corporate Lawyers Worry

Posted on February 16, 2005

More and more corporations are launching executive blogs. Mercury News has confirmed that Intel President Paul Otellini has been blogging exclusively for Intel employees on the Intel intranet. However, the Mercury News still managed to obtain a copy, which means that whatever is blogged can still potentially find its way in front of the public eye. Corporate blogging has raised concerns from legal departments and Mercury News reported that General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said in an interview that "GM's lawyers raised concerns about his blog." GM's executive blogs are located at: fastlane.gmblogs.com. In addition to legal concerns, corporations have to realize other risks. For example, what if Company X blogs feverishly about an upcoming product launch and then for some reason the product launch is pulled. Company X will then be in a situation where they need to explain what happened -- a position they would not have been if they had never blogged about the upcoming product launch in the first place.