Why Are Companies Hiding Their Blogs?

By B.L. Ochman Literally thousands of CEOs, marketing officers, analysts, engineers and other corporate employees are blogging. Yet you'll be hard-pressed to find most corporate blogs through the company web sites. My guess is that lawyers or PR departments are a more than a little nervous about this whole new media, "listen to your customers" thing, so they said "Well, ok, we can try it, but don't make the damn blog too easy to find."

For example, you won't find links to company blogs at:

The New York Times, despite Byron Calame's recent article, "The Times's New Blogs: More Information, Fewer Filters", which lists the company's blogs.

The Wall Street Journal, which has law and other blogs that are not listed or linked to each other.

General Motors, where GM vice-chairman Bob Lutz and others blog.

The New York Stock Exchange, which publishes Hybrid Talk

HP,, where Eric Kintz, Vice President of Global Marketing Strategy & Excellence, blogs

Novell , kind of hard to find, but once you do, there are many here, plus one by CTO Dr Jeff Jaffee and Novell Open PR, which "gives Novell watchers information about what's happening in the company that might not make the cut for a press release, but is still of interest to the market and Novell's customers." (Yeah, right.)

Do you suppose they want to make it hard to find, so that only the motivated will find them? The motivated, or like-minded readers who get the "secret" address from the blogger directly (through an article, speaking engagement, etc.)

Well, that is one way to avoid having to face critical comments on your blog!

Senior execs can be inarticulate. They don't want to look stipud and in very large companies, senior execs are pretty busy people. As one said to me: 'If I didn't have to spend all this time with Wall Street type then...'

Perhaps the blogs are meant for internal use. They could be a tool for the employees to see where the company is going or as a way to get to know the CEO.

B.L. -- Your post is incorrect as it pertains to New York Stock Exchange. Our nyse.com home page prominently features a graphic and link to our HybridTalk blog, right in the middle of the page. We even update the graphic with headlines from the latest blog posts.

We've had that graphic and link in prime nyse.com real estate for several months. Please correct your post. Thanks.

you didn't have it when i wrote the post. glad to hear you have it now.

Interesting post. Found it by way of a bunch of others. It is an interesting question - but what struck me was the reply above. Now that blogging's ok, they're almost yelling at you to stop naming them as someone who was hiding their blog. Incredible!

Just following up on Ken's comment, sorry, didn't mean to come across as "almost yelling." Was just trying to set the record straight. Write in haste, repent at leisure. Again, apologies.