Today’s lesson: Once a post goes up, leave it up. Pulling it down can have worse consequences than letting it stand.
TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington spins the tale of Microsoft developer Stuart Padley, whose blog was last updated in October 2005 before he posted an item explaining that, after finishing work on SQL Server 2005, he was selected by Ray Ozzie to work on the Windows Live Drive project, the company’s impending entry into the file hosting business. While nothing in the post is confidential, according to Arrington, it vanished shortly after it was posted, most likely because some Microsoft executive ordered it down.
Arrington, however, pointed to the post’s cache on Bloglines and posted a screen shot. So today, the story is about Microsoft yanking down an innocuous post rather than the confirmation that Windows Live Drive is coming-something those who pay attention to such matters already knew. Between Arrington’s post and Robert Scoble’s link to it, the story is bound to get a fair amount of attention.
Some may point to this incident as a reason for business not to blog. From where I sit, it’s a reason to ensure you have a blogging policy and that it’s well communicated so the risk of employees posting something they shouldn’t is minimized.
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Shel Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.
As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog a shel of my former self.
