90 Days of BzzAgent: Too Tame, Too Lame, Too Same-Same

Joe Chernov, a PR person for BzzAgent, pinged me today by IM, and asked if I had heard about BzzAgent's blogging "experiment in corporate transparency". Looks ok, but the posts are about as interesting as reading the guest register at the front desk.

But maybe it's not the author's, John Butman's, fault.

As one post shows, deciding to create a long list of limitations on transparency can make the whole thing pretty opaque:

[90 Days of BzzAgent -- Transparency into Transparency I]

The guidelines, so far, are these:

1. 90 Days will not mention the names of BzzAgent employees, or include personal information about them, without their permission. All employees have signed an “acknowledgement” form, which signifies that they know about the blog and that they understand they don’t have to take part in any way. (“Active participation is not and shall not be a condition for employment or advancement within the Company.”)

2. When I talk with BzzAgent employees about company matters, they can specify that the conversation is “off the record” which means that the information is not for publication.

3. 90 Days will not include the real names or personal information of BzzAgents, without their permission, but may refer to their agent names. (E.g. toobusytobee or askanimp or PartyMan98)

4. 90 Days can include the content of BzzReports (the reports that BzzAgents transmit to the Hive about their word-of-mouth activities) if they have agreed — by checking a little box on the report — that the report can be disclosed. (E.g., an excerpt from a report by machobarracho: “The guy who I’d recommended see ‘Troy’ for its battle scene authenticity, reported to me that he hated how bloody and confusing it all was and that the movie seemed to him like a Brad Pitt GQ photo opp.”)

5. 90 Days cannot include information about potential clients or their products, but can include material about current clients, if they agree, or if the information is already public.

6. The blog will not include financial information about BzzAgent.

And I also suppose that a number of unspoken rules apply: no disclosing office politics or gossip, no disclosure of really cool competitive stuff, no expose of strategic arguments among the senior management, and what the subpoena was about.

So then, what are they being transparent about? And this is not limited to BzzAgent. I am not really singling them out, but really poking at the nothing of transparency in coporate blogging.

I believe that unless someone is willing to undertake this with the desire to subvert at least some of those rules, it won't work. I mean, they will get their 700 words a day, and people might even read it (why, I do not know), but it will not lead to a big swing in public sentiment about the creepiness of BzzAgent's business model (yes, it is creepy).

But what are the alternatives?

1. Hire an investigative journalist for a 90 day period, paid in advance, to snoop around the company, ask questions, interview people, and let them write whatever the hell they find out.
   
2. Create a website where people can post their thoughts on BzzAgent.
   
3. Subsidize an independent group -- not an industry group, but a consumer advocacy group -- to create standards for word-of-mouth/social marketing, and agree in advance to adopt them.
   

Those would have been radical, dangerous, and buzzworthy activities. Not this same-old, same-old.

tags: bzzagent, joe+chernov, john+butman, word+of+mouth+marketing, womma

Comments

[Trine-Maria Kristensen]

The problem is that the default setting is closed. My friend Thomas Madsen-Mygdal (the founder of the Reboot conference here in Copenhagen) asked a question about this on his blog back in 2001:

"Why do we take for granted that everything should be closed? What if we started taking for granted that everything should be open? Instead of asking: "why should we be open?" started asking: "why should we be closed?"... This goes for software, information, organizations, etc. I'm not suggesting that everything should be open - just that we considered everything to be open as default!"

And today that is still a valid point - the default setting has got to be open if you are looking for people to participate.

This is also why - when you create policies for blogging or participation you have to make sure that the guidelines are positive:

Instead of: "We will not offend people on the blog" - the guideline could say: "We will be nice". Don't tell people about all the stuff you don't want to do or don't want them to do - just tell them what you ARE going to do!

Don't cut my wings if you want me to fly!