Thursday, July 28, 2005

And Blogging For All... For Real Now

The green light has officially been given... from Employee Central [AOL employees only]...

"As AOL employees, are we allowed to blog? Yes. However all of the policies and guidelines that pertain to how you conduct yourself as an employee also apply to blogging."

If you are blogging or thinking about blogging, be sure to read the full statement. It boils down to 3 simple concepts - don't disclose private information, don't bash co-workers, and don't try to speak for AOL to the media.

Have fun!

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was going to blog about this, but considering it's an internal memo linked to an internal-only URL, thought it wasn't something I could blog about.

I thought about contacting the SBC folks to find out if it's okay to blog about this memo publically -- did you?

Anonymous said...

Mind you...despite the three simple rules you also fall underneath your own department and what can and can't be said. Depending on the level of information and how it applies to your posting to your blog. I have already asked and been forewarned so it's not as simple as it sounds.

Anonymous said...

As long as what is posted doesnt disparage any person/product or violate any NDA's (including Beta) - everything should be all good.

Thanks Juberti on the update. :)

Anonymous said...

Regarding the memo, I thought it was important to update the earlier post on employee blogging with some actual evidence.

Regarding the "3 points" - that was just a quick summary. All employees ought to read the full document.

Anonymous said...

IANAL, but -- isn't everything posted to ec.aol.com considered "AOL confidential" and posting links to it or disclosing information from it considered a violation of the NDA?

Yes, what I'm saying is: I wish the Corp. Communications folks would post a public version of the Employee Blogging FAQ to the America Online Press Center [http://media.timewarner.com/media/newmedia/cb_press.cfm] -- this way the mainstream media can also cover the fact and get some more positive buzz.

Anonymous said...

So in the end it comes down to a judgement call. I can read Yahoo's entire blogging guidelines online, I see no problems with posting a tiny excerpt from ours.

Anonymous said...

I think it is important that expectations are out there on what we will respond to and what we won't, posting 3 rules which IMO are pretty obvious, sets expectations and boundries to those who talk to us.  I get between 5-10 IMs a day and about 10-15 emails a day, while most of the time I get emails that are more like "you guys should do 'insert idea'", sometimes people are asking me about our protocol and suspending SNs...of course the former gets a kind thank you, while the latter is ignored...

Anonymous said...

<i>I can read Yahoo's entire blogging guidelines online, I see no problems with posting a tiny excerpt from ours.</i>

I guess the difference is that Yahoo! published their blogging guidelines publically, while AOL didn't.  That was kinda my point: I wonder if that was intentional -- not publishing the AOL guidelines for public consumption.  Other companies have been leading by example (Yahoo!, Plaxo, IBM, etc.) making their blogging policies public.

Anonymous said...

i want my aol raido to be unblocked please thanks rebecca