The internet has introduced several new words and phrases into the lexicon of everyday language, and the newest entry to make the rounds is “dooced”. According to urbandictionary.com – a website that invites people to introduce new internet-related words – to be “dooced” is to “lose your job for something you wrote in your online blog, journal, website, etc.” According to an estimate by Technorati, a blog search engine, there are currently as many as six million blogs or sites that identify themselves as journals online, with more than 12,000 being added on a daily basis. In the midst of this explosion, and the sheer number of topics addressed by blogs, it’s only natural that some bloggers use their online spaces to discuss work. Others may mention their professional lives in passing, but most bloggers who write about work tend to do so in great detail. Work-related blogs belong to people from every occupation, and although computer programmers tend to dominate the category, the list includes policemen, waiters, airline personnel and paramedics.

The first publicised instance of someone being sacked due to blogging occurred in November 2004, when a flight attendant who referred to herself as “Queen of the Sky” was terminated from her position because her employers felt that her blog featured “inappropriate content”. There was initial media uproar about this incident, but the buzz soon died out and bloggers, deciding to let sleeping dogs lie, made more concentrated efforts to bowdlerise the contents of their blogs. But in mid-January, Google fired one of its newly appointed employees for posting information about life at Google on his blog, which was appropriately titled “Ninetyninezeros”. The action raised eyebrows and caught the attention of many people, since Google is known for its open-house practices, and as part of its corporate policy allows employees to use 20 per cent of their work time for personal projects. Soon after the Google incident, a Finnish school principal complained to local authorities about a blogger who had posted what he considered “disgraceful” comments about his schooling methods. And by the time this article goes to print, Apple will more than likely have lined up to act against one of their Genius Bar workers, for information that he made available on his journal “The Mac Genius”. All these incidents are benign compared to what happened to two Iranian bloggers, one of whom has been sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Controversy is nothing new to the internet. There’s already an activist group known as the “Committee to Protect Bloggers”, which observes a day to symbolise support with the global fraternity of bloggers. Unlike most other technologies, the internet has developed at such a staggering pace that every few days a new facet is unveiled, and it frequently takes a while for people to come to grips with it. For example, there was Napster, and all the controversy regarding peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing and copyright infringement. Blogs are but the latest addition to the roster.

The problem is that companies’ policies are entirely too vague in the computer age. “Inappropriate” use of the internet can mean anything, ranging from hacking passwords to sending personal e-mails during office time, or from applying for other jobs using office internet access to playing fantasy football on company time. Corporations all over the world always try to restrict non-essential internet usage, a policy that causes unrest amongst employees, but companies are well within their rights to limit internet usage by employees during office hours. In fact, in the UK, companies were even given the right to sneak into their employees’ e-mail boxes.

However, the current crackdown against bloggers is strange in that companies have taken action against something that employees do at home. In one of the cases when an employee was fired for blogging, the company argued that the employee had breached the terms of employment by expressing thoughts on company matters and probably jeopardising company secrets. In another case, the company was of the position that the employee had violated the employees’ code of conduct. In either case, companies expelled their workers after they had removed the allegedly inappropriate content from their blogs. Of the two instances given here, one ex-employee is considering filing a lawsuit against the company while the other is simply enjoying his free time reading books.

Employers are overlooking a key point here. Unlike other web facilities, blogs are kept primarily for personal satisfaction, a motivational factor that is especially true for developers and other technology workers. For example, when developers are working on projects, there are times when they are not on the same wavelengths as their project managers. Although they can voice opinions, it is the project managers’ demands that take precedence, and developers may occasionally feel that this stifles their creativity and creates a void. Blogging seems to have filled that void, as no external restrictions are imposed upon their opinions. Bloggers tend to write only about issues that excite them, which is why blogging has become so popular among employees, most of whom tend to find that the topics they are interested in are frequently suppressed by the demands of work.

There are many bloggers who are doing a good job of promoting not only themselves but also their companies. This is because they are enthusiastic about their jobs and make concerted efforts to improve their company’s image. Properly harnessed, blogging can become a very handy tool to interact with present and prospective clientele.

Companies should realise that employees who blog about their work, are a serious competitive advantage. Blogging is by no means a threat, but an opportunity. Good companies overcome the threats, but really good companies turn them into breakthroughs.

Box: The human resources department in the Karachi office of a multinational company had shortlisted three candidates to be interviewed for a new internal position. The candidates were being interviewed back-to-back on a Tuesday morning. At 10:30 a.m., while the second candidate was still being interviewed, other employees of the company posted a series of messages on a popular chat site congratulating the first candidate on being hired for the position. The next day, the second and third candidates – who had stumbled across the postings the previous evening – realised that the company had been hiring for a post that had been pre-decided. Despite the fact that the candidates saved print-outs bearing the exact time at which the messages were posted, indicating that a decision had been reached while the hiring process was ongoing, they did not lodge a formal complaint with the company. Still, for their irresponsible use of public chat sites that compromised the company's integrity, the chatty employees were later reprimanded.

ninetynine zeros
99zeros.blogspot.com
Committee to protect Bloggers
committeetoprotectbloggers.blogspot.com
Live Journal – the Mac Genius
www.livejournal.com/users/themacgenius
Queen of Sky
queenofsky.journalspace.com
Technorati
www.technorati.com
Urban Dictionary|
www.urbandictionary.com