The oldest corporate blog?
A simple (but to me quite relevant) question popped into my head this morning as I was updating my dissertation outline.
When did corporate blogging start?
As in, which is the first, earliest, oldest corporate blog? It’s only natural to sketch the development of corporate blogging when you’re going to write something informative about the phenomenon, but I can’t say I have any definite idea on who the fist blogger in service of a company may have been. Jonathan Schwartz was probably the first CEO of an F500 to blog, but there must have been other, non-exec bloggers before him.
Ideas?
(Note #1: I’m shamelessly pinging a few knowledgeable people who might know.)
(Note #2: Yes, I do subscribe to the idea that “crowdsourcing” is just a euphemism for “too lazy to do actual research”. So shoot me.)
(On Mar 27th, 2007 at 6:35 pm)
Cool question, Cornelius! I’ll chew on it a bit.
(On Mar 27th, 2007 at 7:02 pm)
Thanks, I’ll also keep looking.
(On Mar 27th, 2007 at 8:09 pm)
For fun, go down the Project page at the Fortune 500 Blog Project wiki. See which blog listed there is the oldest. There’s at least three “oldests” - the first ever, the longest-lived and the oldest currently running.
(On Mar 27th, 2007 at 4:42 am)
Sears & Roebuck?
Does it have to be on the web?
(On Mar 27th, 2007 at 8:42 am)
Pretty old - ‘02-’03-ish:
http://blogs.msdn.com/korbyp/archive/2005/05/20/420657.aspx
(On Mar 27th, 2007 at 8:48 am)
@Doug: Well, examples of blogs not on the web are appreciated too. Question really is: when does it stop being a blog? Or do you mean that Sears invented the sticky note?
(On Mar 27th, 2007 at 8:52 am)
@Easton: That is old. I have the suspicion the origin of corporate blogs are developer blogs (big surprise, I know). Still, interesting tidbit. I might bug Korby with an email.
(On Mar 27th, 2007 at 4:34 pm)
I would suspect Microsoft or Macromedia as being some of the oldest corporate blogs.
(On Mar 27th, 2007 at 8:42 am)
Microsoft does sound plausible but details have been hard to confirm so far.